click on image to see more views
2012, In collaboration with Valérie Kolakis.
Installation for three colour inkjet photographs mounted on MDF, 1000 restaurant placemats, wall-mounted vintage jukebox.
Photographs: 100 x 140 cm, 120 x 60 cm, 120 x 120 cm.
This project was inspired by the inexpensive restaurants that have been a feature of the Montréal landscape since the 1950s and have undergone a fundamental transformation in recent years. Places of employment and investment for members of different diaspora settling in Montreal, the transcultural identities of these establishments made many of them tolerant to a diverse clientele. In the 1980s and 1990s, as their older clientele retired and moved away, these restaurants emptied out; many of them became inadvertently accommodating loci for students, artists and intellectuals to meet, talk and think. The unique soundscape of these places, with a mixture of French, English, and the language of the owners and staff mixed with background music from a jukebox or radio, is fading out, as is its influence on our imagination.
Exhibited at the event Écouter un mouvement du voir,
Hexagram UQÀM, Montréal, Québec, 2012.