Conversations in Contemporary Art

Accueil
Canada
Montreal, QC
Conversations in Contemporary Art

a Visiting Artist Lecture Series brought to you by the Concordia University Studio Arts MFA Program

Conversations in Contemporary Art brings national and international artists to Concordia University's Sir George Williams campus in Montréal to speak about their work in conversation with Concordia MFA candidates. Lectures are bi-weekly during the school year, and are free and open to the public. Video documentation of lectures can be found on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVXnNqDy2GJxj6PIV7nYoxg

10/16/2026

We are thrilled to announce our first speaker of the 2026-27 season:

Skawennati
Monday, October 26 at 6 p.m.
Concordia University
VA Building, Room 114
1395 René-Lévesque BLVD W.

In this artist talk, Skawennati will discuss some of her key works over the years, as well as recent projects such as her inclusion in Encoded, an unsanctioned, virtual, group exhibition at The Met, and the reintegration of quilting into her practice.

Seating is first-come, first-served and everyone is welcome!

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Skawennati investigates history, the future, and change from her perspective as an urban Kanien’kehá:ka woman and as a cyberpunk avatar. Her artistic practice questions our relationships with technology and highlights Indigenous people in the future. Her machinimas and machinimagraphs (movies and still images made in virtual environments), textiles and sculpture have been presented internationally and collected by the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal and the Thoma Foundation, among others.

Recipient of a 2022 Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions Grant and an Honorary Doctorate from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, she is also a founding board member of daphne, Montreal’s first Indigenous artist-run centre. She co-founded and co-directs Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research-creation studio-lab based at Concordia University, where she received her BFA. Originally from Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, Skawennati lives and works in Montreal.

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Conversations in Contemporary Art is a free event series that provides a unique opportunity to hear artists, designers, critics, writers, educators, and curators share their practice(s) and perspectives.

This series is made possible through the generous support of Lillian and Billy Mauer.

Images courtesy of Skawennati

03/19/2026

Please join us!

Samia Henni Exhibition Talk
Thursday, March 19 at 6:00 p.m. 
UQAM Design Centre
1440 Sanguinet Street, Montreal, Quebec H2X 3X9

In this talk, historian and curator Samia Henni will discuss her exhibition Colonial Toxicity: French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara, which documents the little-known history of French nuclear colonialism in the Algerian Sahara.

This talk is presented at the UQAM Design Centre. There is no seating for this event.

Image courtesy of Samia Henni.

03/10/2026

Coming up next week!

Samia Henni Exhibition Talk

Thursday, March 19 at 6:00 p.m.
UQAM Design Centre
1440 Sanguinet Street, Montreal

In this talk, historian and curator Samia Henni will discuss her exhibition Colonial Toxicity: French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara, which documents the little-known history of French nuclear colonialism in the Algerian Sahara.

Between 1960 and 1966, the French colonial regime detonated four atmospheric atomic bombs and thirteen underground nuclear bombs in the Sahara Desert in Algeria, causing radioactive fallout that affected Algeria, Africa, and the Mediterranean, as well as irreversible damage to living beings, the natural environment, and buildings. More than 60 years after the first bomb was detonated, access to the archives of the French nuclear program remains very limited, and the consequences of these detonations remain largely unknown.

Please note: There is no seating for this event.

Samia Henni is a historian of built, destroyed, and imagined environments. She received her doctorate in architectural history and theory from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) and currently teaches at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University in Montreal. Her work addresses issues of colonization, war, resource extraction, deserts, forced displacement, and gender dynamics.

She published Architecture of the Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria with gta Verlag (EN) in 2017 and Éditions B42 (FR) in 2019, Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara with If I Can’t Dance, Framer Framed edition fink (EN) in 2024 and Colonial Toxicity: Documenting the Radioactive Landscape in the Sahara with Éditions B42 (FR) in 2026. She edited the collective works War Zones (2018) and Deserts Are Not Empty (2022, 2024) and several exhibitions, including Psychocolonial Spaces (2025–), Performing Colonial Toxicity (2023–), and Discreet Violence (2017–).

This event is made possible through the generous support of Lillian and Billy Mauer.

Images courtesy of Samia Henni

02/18/2026

More incredible work by Yashua Klos. Come to the talk to learn more!

Yashua Klos
Thursday, February 19 at 6:30 p.m.
Concordia University
EV Building, Room 1.615
1515 Ste-Catherine St. W.

In this artist talk, Yashua Klos will discuss his woodblock print based, multi-media practice. Klos’s work examines memory, identity, and Americans' relationship to labour through fragmentation, material, process, and scale.

Seating is first-come, first-served and everyone is welcome.

02/10/2026

Announcing 📢

YASHUA KLOS
Thursday, February 19 at 6:30 p.m.
Concordia University
EV Building, Room 1.615
1515 Ste-Catherine St. W.

In this artist talk, Yashua Klos will discuss his woodblock print based, multi-media practice. Klos’s work examines memory, identity, and Americans' relationship to labour through fragmentation, material, process, and scale.

Seating is first-come, first-served and everyone is welcome.

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In his multi-media practice, Yashua Klos explores themes of identity, memory, and African Americans’ relationship to American labour. His large-scale works are created through intricate woodblock prints and monotypes, forming multi-dimensional, fragmented compositions that reimagine Blackness beyond traditional collage. Rather than using ready-made materials, Klos generates all source imagery through printmaking, assembling figures that exist within intertwined networks of history, myth, and lived reality. He received a BFA from Northern Illinois University and an MFA from Hunter College. His work has been presented internationally, including the major solo exhibition Yashua Klos: OUR LABOUR at the Wellin Museum of Art, and is held in several public museum collections. Klos lives and works in New York.

This series is made possible through the generous support of Lillian and Billy Mauer.

Images courtesy of Yashua Klos

01/28/2026

Can't wait for tomorrow (Thursday)!

Miriam Simun
Thursday, January 29 at 6:30 p.m.
EV Building, Room 1.615
1515 Ste-Catherine St. W.

In this lecture titled Leaking, Seeping, Fusing, Merging, artist Miriam Simun will discuss key themes in her practice that asks us to think critically about the systems and ideologies we engage in every day. Simun’s work explores how animal bodies (human and non) collide with rapidly evolving techno-ecosystems, asking how these collisions can nourish, poison, control, evade, control, mutate, and co-evolve?

Seating is first-come, first-served and everyone is welcome!

This series is made possible through the generous support of Lillian and Billy Mauer.

Images courtesy of Miriam Simun

01/20/2026

Mark your calendars, everybody, our next talk is coming up fast!

Miriam Simun
Thursday, January 29 at 6:30 p.m.
EV Building, Room 1.615
1515 Ste-Catherine St. W.

In this lecture titled Leaking, Seeping, Fusing, Merging, artist Miriam Simun will discuss key themes in her practice that asks us to think critically about the systems and ideologies we engage in every day. Simun’s work explores how animal bodies (human and non) collide with rapidly evolving techno-ecosystems, asking how these collisions can nourish, poison, control, evade, control, mutate, and co-evolve?

Seating is first-come, first-served and everyone is welcome!

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Miriam Simun is a multidisciplinary artist using science, somatics, poetry and humour to create artworks that explore the collision of ecosystems, new technologies and human power structures, through video, installation, drawing, performance, and communal sensorial experiences. Trained as a sociologist, Simun takes on the role of ‘artist-as-fieldworker,’ conducting first-person research with diverse places and communities: from scientific laboratories to rewilded forests, from freedivers to human pollinators. This in-depth and corporeal research dictates the form of the final works.

Simun’s work has been presented internationally, including Gropius Bau, New Museum and MIT List Center for Visual Art, recognized in publications including the BBC, The New York Times, The New Yorker, CBC, MTV, and Flash Art International, the work has been supported by Creative Capital, New York State Council for the Arts, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Gulbenkian Foundation and Onassis Foundation.

This series is made possible through the generous support of Lillian and Billy Mauer.

Images courtesy of Miriam Simun

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Site Web

https://www.concordia.ca/cica

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