Conversations in Contemporary Art

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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

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

11/19/2025

We're thrilled to be hosting Jinyoung this week! Please join us! 📷 🪴

Jinyoung Kim
Thursday, November 20 at 6:30 p.m.
EV Building, Room 1.605
1515 Ste-Catherine St. W.

This lecture will provide an overview of Jinyoung Kim’s artistic practice. Through photography, experimental filmmaking, and sculpture, Kim explores concepts of place, memory, and the notion of home as shaped by experiences of migration.

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

11/15/2025

Please join us for our last talk of the semester!

Jinyoung Kim
Thursday, November 20 at 6:30 p.m.
EV Building, Room 1.605
1515 Ste-Catherine St. W.

This lecture will provide an overview of Jinyoung Kim’s artistic practice. Through photography, experimental filmmaking, and sculpture, Kim explores concepts of place, memory, and the notion of home as shaped by experiences of migration.

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

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Jinyoung Kim is a visual artist whose practice explores a sense of place and material culture as a core condition where personal and collective memories coalesce, expanding on an imagined realm that bridges past and present. She utilizes photography, video, and object-based installations to weave together an inventory of lived experiences that stem from the perspective of a diaspora.

Her works have been exhibited and screened across Canada and internationally. In 2022, her film received the Seeing and Not Knowing short film production bursary organized by the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery. She was awarded the Prix Lynne Cohen in 2019, which was presented by the Estate of Lynne Cohen and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and she was shortlisted for the Prix Pierre-Ayot in 2018. Kim’s projects have been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Her works are held in numerous collections in both public and private institutions, including the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Ville de Montréal, Hydro-Québec, and Banque Desjardins.

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

Images courtesy of Jinyoung Kim

11/12/2025

🌿🌸🌱🪻☘️

Don't miss Aaron's talk - tomorrow at the !

Aaron McIntosh: Exhibition Talk

Thursday, November 13 at 6 p.m.
FOFA Gallery, Room EV-1.715
1515 Ste-Catherine St. W.

In this exhibition talk Aaron McIntosh will discuss the Hot House / Maison chaude project – envisioned as a fertile space for initiating new q***r dialogues. Drawing from: q***r ecology, science fiction, ethnobotany, eco-feminism, and social practice; this project offers a generative space for imagining thriving q***r ecosystems, at a moment where anti-trans and homophobic rhetoric is on the rise in Canada and the US.

Please note: This talk is presented as a gallery walk-through. As such, there is no seating at this event.

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Conversations in Contemporary Art is a free event series sponsored by Concordia University's Studi

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

Images courtesy of Aaron McIntosh

11/03/2025

Aaron McIntosh: Exhibition Talk

Thursday, November 13 at 6 p.m.
FOFA Gallery, Room EV-1.715
1515 Ste-Catherine St. W.

In this exhibition talk Aaron McIntosh will discuss the Hot House / Maison chaude project – envisioned as a fertile space for initiating new q***r dialogues. Drawing from: q***r ecology, science fiction, ethnobotany, eco-feminism, and social practice; this project offers a generative space for imagining thriving q***r ecosystems, at a moment where anti-trans and homophobic rhetoric is on the rise in Canada and the US.

Please note: This talk is presented as a gallery walk-through. As such, there is no seating at this event.

-

Aaron McIntosh is a cross-disciplinary artist and fourth-generation quiltmaker whose work mines the intersections of material culture, family tradition, sexual desire and identity politics. His exhibition record includes numerous solo and group exhibitions, most recently The Gloaming at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Entanglements at Northeastern University, and Radical Tradition: Quilts and Social Change at the Toledo Museum of Art. Since 2015, McIntosh has managed Invasive Q***r Kudzu, a community storytelling and archive project across the 2SLGBTQ+ Southern United States. He is a 2020 United States Artist Fellow in Craft, and other honours include a 2017 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, and two Windgate Fellowships in 2006 and 2015 from the Center for Craft.

Conversations in Contemporary Art is a free event series sponsored by Concordia University's Studio Arts MFA Program. The series 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 Aaron McIntosh,

10/21/2025

Announcing 📢

DAVID ANTONIO CRUZ
Thursday, October 30, 2025 at 6:30 p.m.
Concordia University, EV Building, Room 1.605
1515 St. Catherine W.

In this lecture, David Antonio Cruz will discuss his work across painting, drawing, performance, and site-specific installation over the last 25 years, focusing on the relationships between portraiture, q***r discourse, fashion, history, and popular culture.

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

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David Antonio Cruz is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, drawing, performance, and site-specific installations. Drawing on a mix of q***r discourse, fashion, history, and pop culture, his work interrogates Western traditions of representation and invites subjects to pose as a form of resistance and play, q***ring the act of posing.

Cruz has exhibited at ICA San Francisco, Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, ICA Philadelphia, ICA Boston, Newark Museum of Art, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, El Museo del Barrio, the Ford Foundation, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Kemper Art Museum. He was a 2025 Latinx Artist Fellow and has completed residencies at Joan Mitchell, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and Villa Bergerie Art. Cruz lives and works in New York City.

Images courtesy of David Antonio Cruz.

Address

1395 Rene Levesque Ouest
Montreal, QC

Website

https://www.concordia.ca/cica

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