Group Exhibition — A Deeper Night

The exhibition A Deeper Night, curated by Josianne Poirier, toke place from September 12 to November 3, 2024. The exhibition brought together artists Olivia Boudreau (QC), Lisa Hirmer (ON), Anna Jane McIntyre (QC), Diane Obomsawin (QC), Corinne Silva (United Kingdom), Carl Trahan (QC) and D’Arcy Wilson (NL).

A Deeper Night

Text by Josianne Poirier,
Curator

Darkness is fast disappearing. With the introduction of electric light in the nineteenth century and its widespread adoption in the West at the beginning of the next century, both in urban centres and in the countryside, the age-old alternating of day and night was radically disrupted. This recent development in history has altered the reproductive, migratory and feeding behaviours of a great many living creatures. In so doing, it poses a threat to biodiversity. The sociological and aesthetic uses of artificial light too often seem to take precedence over ecological needs for darkness.

The exhibition A Deeper Night fits in with a desire to reflect on a better way for species to cohabit the night. But it does this while taking into account the visual paradigm specific to that diurnal animal, the human. While the conquest of night by means of light was first carried out in the name of people’s safety and an increase in productive time, it also responds to a primeval fear of darkness. When sight becomes impossible, the imagination is spurred into action, though other senses can also take over.

How do we feel in the darkness? Who are the beings with whom we share the space-time of night? How is this cohabitation experienced within the ordinary spaces of everyday life? The works of the seven artists featured in this exhibition kindle our awareness of these questions.

A Deeper Night explores different facets of the individual and collective experience of darkness—individual in that it alters the body’s perception of its surroundings, collective because it is always shared and must be regained in the name of our common future. Through the seven works that make up the exhibition, A Deeper Night is an invitation to consider how darkness enriches life.