Polyphonies, a group exhibition currently on display at Optica, examines, as the title suggests, a plurality of voices and the negotiation between the informal individual subject and a more proscribed voice of the Other, the group, or the institution. Curated by Véronique Leblanc and featuring eight artists (including two sets of collectives), the exhibited works all revolve around dialogue and/or recitation. The experience of the subjects featured (sometimes including the viewer) ranges from passive to abrasive to bordering on intrusive. 
Katarina Zdjeldar, Don’t Do It Wrong, 2009, video
Among the strongest works in the exhibition is Emmanuelle Léonard’s La Taverne, where the aging locals of a bar discuss directly to the camera their impressions and experiences of life. The marginalized leisure community of La Taverne battles sonically against Katarina Zdjelar’s video Don’t Do It Wrong, which features a group of Turkish school children running wild then straightening up in rows to sing the national anthem. Considering how the two groups are very much at odds with one another, the two works make an effective pairing.
In the second gallery, the viewer is immediately confronted by Sophie Castonguay’s La part du lion. A man approaches the visitor directly and begins to perform a rather impassive monologue, clearly reciting from an earpiece, on the “idea of looking” in relation to a series of paintings on the wall. The resulting discomfort led a couple of my fellow viewers to refuse to engage and instead hightail it out of there almost as soon as they entered. I tried to give the performance my time, despite the fact that my baby in his stroller decided to add his own fussy contribution to the polyphony of the show. The performer ploughed through and I tried to negotiate between the two – the impatient non-verbal baby and the soft spoken robotic discourse pleading with me to slow down, take my time, and look.
The ideas raised in this exhibition are interesting and the works articulate the theme well; however, it still feels oddly dated since no work relates directly to the internet. Relations between individuals and communities have been dramatically redefined through this technology and an exhibition on polyphony should at least reflect that.
Optica: http://www.optica.ca/
Polyphonies continues until June 13.
Susannah Wesley is an artist and curator living in Montreal. She has been a member of the collaborative duo Leisure since 2004 and from 1997-2000 was part of the notorious British art collective the Leeds13. Formerly Director at Battat Contemporary in Montreal, she holds an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and an MA in Art History from Concordia University. She is Akimblog's Montreal correspondent and can be followed @susannahwesley1 on Twitter.
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Polyphonies at Optica, Montreal
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