Produced in collaboration with the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ), Manif d'art 10 will once again infiltrate the Quebec City cultural circuit from January 22 to March 21, 2021, with many surprises awaiting. For the occasion, Steven Matijcio will bring together artists from around the world in order to reflect collectively on the concept of illusion through engaging practices. In order to do so, he's teaming up with Claude Bélanger, General and Artistic Director at Manif d'art, Bernard Lamarche, Curator of Contemporary Art at the MNBAQ, and Michelle Drapeau, Assistant Curator of the Biennial for a second term.
"For this anniversary edition, Manif d'art promises a biennial based in unexpected places. All I can say for now is that Manif d'art is consistently more and more present in the City, putting our beautiful capital on the map of prominent contemporary art destinations." Declares Claude Bélanger, General and Artistic Director at Manif d’art. "Audiences will certainly be won over by the selected artists' various proposals around this theme blending illusion and reality." Concludes M. Bélanger.
At the Heart of the Theme : Magic Realism
The theme of Manif d'art 10 is inspired by Magic Realism, an artistic movement seeking the spontaneous manifestation of seemingly magical, supernatural or irrational elements that arise in the realm of reality. The biennial will be an opportunity to explore artistic practices making use of the trompe-l’œil, strategies of misdirection and sleight of hand as vehicles. This reflection on illusions will also reassess many sociopolitical issues steeped in our reality. By defamiliarizing the everyday, the selected artworks will highlight and reveal the illusory mechanisms invading our contemporary world, from artificial flavours to misinformation campaigns.
“We’ve always had this hierarchy where reality was seen as somehow superior to illusion. The distinction doesn’t seem as clear now. In a society which welcomes artifice with open arms, where we give in to the wonderment and pleasure of being constantly deceived and misdirected, what are the political ramifications? The curatorial proposal is twofold : the works of the biennial will unveil the workings of illusion from a critical perspective, just as they will revel in the magic that these illusions can inspire in our everyday lives.“ Says Steven Matijcio, Curator of Manif d’art 10.
Biography of Steven Matijcio
Steven Matijcio has been the Director and Chief Curator of the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston since 2019. Before that, he was the head of the curatorial department at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati since 2013. During his tenure there, he has curated solo shows of Firelei Báez (2018), Kahlil Joseph (2018), Glenn Kaino (2017), Andrea Bowers (2017), Do Ho Suh (2016) and Titus Kaphar (2015), among others. He also served on the curatorial team of After the Moment : Reflections on Robert Mapplethorpe, which opened in November 2015 to mark the 25th anniversary of the CAC Mapplethorpe retrospective.
