MAI’s 25th anniversary unveils its first exhibition
Connecting From the Inside Out is a space of love, healing and vulnerability
As the summer festival season winds down, the Montréal, arts interculturels (MAI) is celebrating the start of its new season Returning to Love with the exhibition Connecting From the Inside Out.
The vernissage on Sept. 6 featured the work of My-Van Dam and was curated by Geneviève Wallen. The event marked the start of the exhibition with a small crowd and speeches from Dam, Wallen and MAI artistic and executive director Camille Larivée.
“It starts from my own personal journey of healing,” said Dam, whose vision was born from her experience with Somatic Experiencing, a form of alternative therapy that tackles both the psychological and physical symptoms of trauma.
“When you think about trauma, it's something that is stored in your body and that is still,” Dam said, gesturing to the bubbles ornamenting one of her sculptural works, Becoming Fluid. “Becoming fluid is a way to refine some energy in your body, to be able to be free from trauma.”
The main piece of the exhibition is a video installation composed of four large screens displaying four performers interacting with Dam’s sculptures, which she calls Objects of Solidarity. The performers are depicted moving slowly through a white space, first solo and then coming together, making guttural noises with their throats.
“We're making sure that space is ethereal [and] infinite because we really wanted [it] to feel almost like a dream space,” director of photography Nadia Louis-Desmarchais said. “When we pressed ‘record,’ it was super quiet in the studio. We would just see the performers move in the space, making noises with their throats. It was really, really peaceful, and it was really healing.”
Dam’s Objects of Solidarity guide the dancers towards each other.
“[The performers] come together under a theme of healing, and therefore, they come together with this idea of love and tenderness between each other,” Wallen said. “What I find really mesmerizing about this video is to see those little moments of closeness.”
Dam synthesizes somatic practices of voice and movement, bringing together her dance and visual arts practices for the first time. In a work that is at once notably delicate and powerful in its effect, Dam creates a space for the spectator to rest, reflect and unfreeze.
“It's not just individual trauma,” Dam said. “It stems from a system. It stems from oppression. It stems from a whole structure [of] collective trauma. [...] Everything is connected.”
Dam’s exhibition will be displayed at MAI until Oct. 26.
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