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Habitat

Festival Art Souterrain

contemporary art
exhibition
from march 15 to april 6, 2025

Theme: Habitat

From March 15 to April 6, 2025, the underground city will undergo a transformation to create a new habitat for the 17th edition of the Festival Art Souterrain.
Contemporary societal challenges prompt us to reconsider not only our environment but also our way of living and conceiving our surroundings. What defines a habitat? Is it the built environment we create, or the intimate, trusting spaces we cultivate within them? The 17th edition of the Festival Art Souterrain provides an opportunity to explore our relationship with intimate life and how we navigate a rapidly changing world.

Curators Geneviève Thibault and Eric Millette investigate the various aspects of the modern habitat, focusing on its human, social, and environmental dimensions. Through photography, video, installation, sculpture, and performance, the featured artists address and contribute to envisioning a future where our habitats reflect the very values of creativity, sustainability, and inclusivity.

Habitat - Festival Art Souterrain

The Curators

Geneviève Thibault

Guest Curator

« Inhabited spaces reveal various forms of accumulation: bodies, materials, possessions, experiences, habits, relationships, responsibilities, and workloads. Also, the accumulation of presences and, above all, absences. »

Geneviève Thibault

From Matane, where I live, and my identity as a white woman, mother and artist, I question the meaning of home in a world of accelerating change, where imagination, slowness, longevity or immateriality emerge as acts of resistance. The traditional idea of home as a place of safety, stability, self-expression, and a solid foundation for identity is being challenged. Under what circumstances and in what ways does it resist? Could the idea of home be more internal, existing within the body rather than as an external shelter?

Some works in the exhibition explore deep connections to a place or a group of people, while others highlight the alienating nature of everyday life or the paradox of seeking shelter from external forces. Like a patchwork quilt of mismatched households that defy norms and captivate, I hope that the ideas presented in the underground pathways of TiohTià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal will make visible a wide range of lived experiences, both real and imaginary, by artists from various built environments. In a way, it’s an invitation to ‘come home’ and participate in this collective contemplation on the future of housing.

Geneviève Thibault is an artist, author, curator, and photography teacher with a keen interest in domestic spaces as a meeting place. Her concerns, which all converge around the question of cohabitation, led her to a multidisciplinary bachelor’s degree in Indigenous studies and Ethnology, followed by a Master’s in Fine Arts. She received the 2024 Yvonne L. Bombardier Visual Arts grant and the 2019 Prix international des Nouvelles Écritures (Freelens, France). Her work has been exhibited in Quebec, Ontario, and Europe.

Since incorporating writing into her practice in 2021, her poetry and critical texts have been featured in several art and literary journals in Quebec. She has curated group exhibitions exploring the relationship between habitat and art, whether through presenting art in the public space or by bringing together artistic proposals that question the forces at work in the act of inhabiting. Born in Matane, on the Mi’gmaq Gespe’gewa’gi, where she has been living with her family since 2013.

Eric Millette

Guest Curator

« What are we looking for in a place we call home? This reflection becomes important if we aim to one day foster the appropriation of a home for everyone. Art can help us explore the essential qualities that a space must embody to truly be called a home. »

Eric Millette

What are the specific and essential characteristics that a place must have to be considered a habitat, a home, in 2025? In a world where the built environment is undergoing significant changes, I would like to question the physical qualities, images, and perceptions associated with our place of residence, our home.

Our relationship with home is unique, as it can evoke a range of interconnected emotions, including comfort, intimacy, belonging, pride, and a connection to the outside world. These feelings provide exciting opportunities for artistic and creative exploration. Art possesses the ability to evoke, transform, and even challenge our understanding of home and our relationship with it. The artists featured in this exhibition examine these concepts in relation to the spaces we inhabit.

For me, the Festival Art Souterrain has always been an excellent opportunity to foster conversations between art and public space due to its unique occupation of that environment.

Eric Millette has degrees in architecture and cultural heritage and has been working as a designer in the visual arts world for over 15 years. His work in architecture has focused on understanding the potential for generating ideas at intervention sites. Over the years, he has developed particular expertise in designing and integrating contemporary architecture into complex heritage settings.

His interest in the suggestive power of contemporary art has led him to explore the relationship between art installations and their locations. He gradually became involved in the cooperation and design of works integrated into architecture. He has collaborated on various art projects, including Organicus by artist Jonathan Villeneuve, Leurs effigies by Yann Pocreau in 2018, and Nuances collaboratives with painter Frédérique Ulman-Gagné in 2022.

L'actrice Karine Gonthier-Hyndman, porte-parole du festival

Karine Gonthier-Hyndman

Spokesperson

Karine Gonthier-Hyndman has stood out in the theater world with numerous roles over the past decade. The wide array of projects she has taken on highlights her versatility and her passion for creation. She has shone in productions such as Queue cerise (Olivier Morin) and Toccate et Fugue (Florent Siaud) at Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Frédéric Bélanger) at Théâtre Denise-Pelletier, and The Novel of Monsieur Molière (Lorraine Pintal) at TNM. In 2023, she captivated audiences with Le Faiseur (Alice Ronfard) at Théâtre Denise-Pelletier and Seeker (Justin Laramée) at Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, before continuing in 2024 with Le Prénom (Serge Denoncourt).

On television, she has accumulated roles in productions such as Toi & Moi II, Les Beaux Malaises, and Nouvelle Adresse, bringing her to wider public attention. Karine was nominated at the Gémeaux Awards from 2016 to 2018 for her brilliant role as Élizabeth in Les Simone (Best Supporting Actress: Comedy) and from 2016 to 2024 for Like-moi (Best Performance: Comedy). She won the Gémeaux Awards with her teams in 2018 and 2020 (Like-moi) and 2021 (Entre deux draps).

In 2019, she took on the unforgettable role of Alexandra in the series Les Invisibles, directed by Alexis Durant-Brault, on TVA. From 2020 to 2024, she portrayed Micheline, the partner of Patrice Robitaille’s Serge, in the acclaimed series C’est comme ça que je t’aime by the creators of Série Noire on Radio-Canada. She can also be seen in Patrick Sénécal présente on Club Illico, Chouchou on Noovo, Sans Rendez-vous, and Avant le crash on Radio-Canada.

On the big screen, Karine left a lasting impression with her roles in Henri (2011) and Frimas (2021), two films that stood out in the prestigious Oscar race. She also appeared in Trip à trois (Nicolas Monette) and Falcon Lake (Charlotte Le Bon). In 2024, she starred in the series Veille sur moi by Rafaël Ouellet, and in 2025, she will appear in the film Deux femmes en or, directed by Chloé Robichaud, competing in the official selection at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, further solidifying her place among the most talented artists of her generation.

© 2025 Art Souterrain
We recognize that the Art Souterrain Festival is taking place on the unceded territories : place of life and gathering of different Indigenous nations.