Art Mûr is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Since January, we have been redoubling our efforts to ensure that our proposed exhibition projects stand out from Montreal’s cultural scene, which, as we all know, is exceptional. But without a group exhibition, this would not be a successful celebration for us. Art Mûr has made a name for itself through its curated thematic group exhibitions: over the past 30 years, we’ve presented more than 80 of them. It all began with Du côté de chez soi, curated by Roger Bellemarre, followed by two to three group exhibitions per year. Among the most significant are undoubtedly our anniversary exhibitions, such as Art Fiction for our 10th anniversary, Mens-moi for our 15th, Grandeur nature for our 20th, and Terra nova / Regard sur le présent et le futur for our 25th. Today, it is with great pleasure that we continue our tradition with Crescendo: orchestrating one’s own story (1996–2026); we have composed this symphony with an eye toward both the past and the future.

Our goal is not only to highlight our history and how we built it, but also the histories of the participating artists, without whom we would not be here today. We want to highlight the perseverance and ambition we all share. Crescendo: orchestrating one’s own story (1996– 2026) will feature more than thirty artists, including Sonny Assu, Ingrid Bachmann, Jason Baerg, Patrick Beaulieu, Judith Berry, Patrick Bérubé, BGL, Melvin Charney, Robbie Cornelissen, Marc Antoine Côté, Nicholas Crombach, Shayne Dark, Pierre Dorion, Kevin Dubeau, Eddy Firmin, David Garneau, Emy Gagnon Gélinas, Karine Giboulo, Hédy Gobaa, Mathieu Gotti, Adam Gunn, Jessica Houston, Jean-Robert Drouillard, Holly King, Guillaume Lachapelle, Laurent Lamarche, Éric Lamontagne, Cal Lane, Pierre Laroche, Zeke Moores, Mohadese Movahed, Clint Neufeld, Samuel Nnorom, Christine Nobel, Adétọnà Omokanye, Michael Patten, Karine Payette, Brigitte Radecki, Bevan Ramsay, Heather Shillinglaw, Oli Sorenson, Diana Thorneycroft, Claude Tousignant, David Umemoto, Brandon Vickerd, Colleen Wolstenholme, Jinny Yu.

Thirty years of art and culture

This project allows us to highlight the work of a few artists who have been part of our thirty-year journey, from our early years in the Saint-Henri neighborhood to the present day. The work Carry the torch by Nova Scotia-based artist Adam Gunn presents a piece that illustrates dignity through tenacity—a kind of heroic tenacity or survival instinct that is both childlike and admirable. It is this tenacity that has brought us to where we are today. This work is a reflection of our perseverance and our desire to forge our own path, to shape our own story.

For the past twenty years, Ontario-based artist Judith Berry has accompanied us in our ambitions and exhibitions. Side by side, we have grown and experimented. Judith Berry’s Leak transforms a landscape into an uncanny maze, balancing familiarity with disorientation. The “leak” may suggest boundaries breaking down between nature and construction, inside and outside, or reality and imagination.

Michael Patten, a Cree artist and a member of the Zagime Nation in Ssaskatchewan, has been with us for nearly twenty years. As an employee, curator, artist, and friend, he serves as an important and indispensable point of reference for our artists and collaborators, offering a friendly and familiar presence. His work explores Indigenous identities and histories linked to the colonial past. Untitled features an Indigenous headdress as a symbol of Indigenous identity. It is covered with a thick layer of white paint, enough to create a puddle—like a “black” tide—on the floor. In this way, Patten challenges notions of essentialism while critiquing the way in which Indigenous values and territories have been appropriated and ultimately turned into cultural and economic commodities.

Hédy Gobaa uses painting to gain a deeper understanding of everyday events. For him, painting allows him to undergo a process of acclimatization—that is, to attempt to understand nothingness. His most recent work, Du bonheur en barre, is part of his new, ongoing series that draws on the codes of pop, infantilizing, and kitsch imagery found in Western consumer society. This painting is intended as a critique of the notion of “happiness”—that is, the media tool of normalization and control that seeks to buy social peace and render critical thinking obsolete. The little girl, dressed as Nemesis, the goddess of justice and vengeance, finds herself a unicorn and dreams of being able to solve all the world’s problems.

These are just four examples among many that will help us celebrate this anniversary. While it is impossible for us to thank all of our colleagues, this is meant to be a letter of appreciation for those who have supported us from the very beginning.