An exhibition season examining the intersections of territory, identity, ecology, and collaborative practice
6 septembre 2026 • WestmountMag.ca
The McClure Gallery at the Visual Arts Centre (VAC) presents its fall 2026 program, bringing together artists and a Montreal collective around deeply timely questions: territory, identity, transmission, materials, and communities.
From September 2026 to January 2027, three exhibitions will offer distinct perspectives on geographic and intimate displacement, cultural heritage, environmental responsibility and the narratives we construct, individually and collectively, from the places we inhabit.
The program includes a solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Josepha Dumas; the 6th Virginia McClure Ceramics Biennale, entrusted to the collective Everything Already Present; and a new edition of Pictura, bringing together Yasmeen Dajani and José Mendizábal.
Josepha Dumas: Roads of Memory
Where the Roads Meet
September 4 to October 10, 2026
Art Hive: Saturday, September 26, 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., as part of the Journées de la culture
With Where the Roads Meet, Josepha Dumas brings together works created between 2015 and 2026 around a motif that is as concrete as it is symbolic: the road. Painting, drawing and sculpture become means of mapping journeys of migration, memory and belonging. Informed by connections among Haiti, Montreal and New York, Dumas’s practice brings multiple geographies, eras and histories together within hybrid landscapes. Her compositions layer images, references and memories to evoke the movements that shape diasporic identities.
A program bringing together artists and a Montreal collective around deeply timely questions: territory, identity, transmission, materials, and communities.
Born in Port-au-Prince and having lived between Haiti, Miami, Germany and Montreal, the Haitian-French artist has long explored ideas of displacement, heritage and belonging. Her multidisciplinary practice also includes installation, sound and video, and seeks to create environments in which personal narratives meet collective history. The exhibition invites visitors to see the road not only as a route, but as a meeting place: between origins and destinations, between memory and the present, between private histories and shared territories.
Earth as Memory and Material
Where We Stand, the Earth Remembers
6th Virginia McClure Ceramics Biennale
October 23 to November 28, 2026
Opening reception: Thursday, October 22, 6 p.m.
Art Hive: Saturday, November 28, 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The 6th Virginia McClure Ceramics Biennale considers an essential question: what might a visual arts centre founded today look like, in a context shaped by ecological and social crises?
Entitled Where We Stand, the Earth Remembers, the exhibition is led by Everything Already Present, a Montreal collective made up of ceramic artists Kimberly Orjuela, Cassi Camille, Sara Mericle, Sam Duquette, Élodie Dubuc-Bernard and Owen Herlin.
Drawing on research into local materials, shared knowledge and sustainable practices, the collective presents sculptures, installations and interactive works. The project addresses environmental justice, resource extraction, cultural memory, and the connections between identity and territory.
Here, the earth appears at once as a creative material, a living archive and a witness to human transformation. Ceramics therefore become a particularly evocative language: they prompt reflection on the origins of materials, acts of making, the environmental costs of production and knowledge passed from person to person.
Formed at Concordia University, Everything Already Present takes a collaborative approach to contemporary ceramics. The collective is engaged in community outreach, peer knowledge-sharing, support for ceramics education, and the search for more sustainable material practices within arts institutions.
The public program will extend these reflections through a recipe booklet devoted to local materials and sustainable techniques, as well as two hands-on workshops on gathering local clay and making glazes from ash and seaweed.
Pictura 2026: Intimacy and Heritage
Roses for the Arcade of Dreams
December 11, 2026, to January 30, 2027
Opening reception: Thursday, December 10, 6 p.m.
Art Hive with the artists: To be confirmed
For its 2026 edition, Pictura brings Yasmeen Dajani and José Mendizábal together in a two-person exhibition in which painting and drawing become tools for exploring intimacy, memory and collective identity. The two artists take different formal approaches but share a sustained attention to narratives constructed in familiar spaces—the home, relationships, social life, inherited images, and everyday gestures.
In Darling over and over, Yasmeen Dajani will present a series of drawings depicting scenes from everyday life. Her dense, ornate and meticulous visual language creates images that move between familiarity and strangeness. Domestic spaces, repeated rituals and interpersonal ties become sites for reflecting on belonging, shared memory and the stories we tell from our own lives.
With Pure Diplomacy, José Mendizábal will present a series of paintings inspired by Ecuadorian social life and archival documents. Moving between intimate scenes and broader compositions, his work examines mestizo identity, cultural inheritances and the negotiations that run through a diasporic experience.
Exhibitions Open to Participation
Beyond the works on view, the McClure Gallery’s program emphasizes encounters with the public. Each exhibition is accompanied by a free Art Hive as part of the McClure Gallery’s Arts Awakening program. Led by the exhibiting artists, these mini-workshops allow visitors to experiment with different media and themes inspired by the current exhibition. Materials are provided, no registration is required, and everyone is welcome.
This participatory dimension fits naturally within a season that views art not as an isolated gesture, but as a space for dialogue—between artists and visitors, between materials and memories, and between lived and imagined territory.
About McClure Gallery
Located at the Visual Arts Centre, McClure Gallery presents exhibitions by established and emerging professional artists. From September through June, it offers a program of exhibitions and public activities that encourages the discovery of contemporary art and exchange within the visual-arts community. For information, contact the gallery at 514-488-9558, ext. 226, or email at info@visualartscentre.ca
McClure Gallery
350 Victoria Avenue, Westmount
514 488-9558
info@visualartscentre.ca
Images: Josepha Dumas, Too Cold Mer de Ciel on Fire, 2019, oil pastel and Sharpie marker on wood, 76 × 102 cm – Courtesy of McClure Gallery
