Artists in the show:
Amanda Beattie
Gwen Baddeley
David Baumflek
Joe Becker
Maria Chronopoulos
Nina Dubois
Rachel Echenberg
Andréanne Godin
Antonietta Grassi
David Hall
Harlan Johnson
Julianna Joos
Lise-Hélène Larin
Naomi London
Nadia Moss
Natalie Olanick
Pohanna Pyne Feinberg
Kristi Ropeleski
Jackson Slattery
Bahar Taheri
Ingrid Syage Tremblay
Welcome to the 16th Biennial Exhibition of the Fine Arts faculty. For over three decades, this exhibition has served as a cornerstone of our community, a celebration of the creativity, vision, and passion that drives the members of our faculty. As we gather to view this remarkable collection of works, we are reminded of the profound impact that art and the act of making have on both the artist and the viewer.
For our faculty, this Biennial is an opportunity to share their personal explorations—works that reflect years of dedication to the profession, a commitment to innovation, and a constant quest for new ways to express complex ideas. But the Biennial is more than just a showcase of accomplished work. It is a teaching moment for all of us, particularly for our students. The very process of creation on display here speaks volumes about what it means to be an artist: the courage to experiment, the resilience to confront failure, and the freedom to explore new ideas without fear of judgment.
This exhibition has a unique power to inspire our students, demonstrating what is possible when creativity is nurtured and pursued with integrity. It shows them that art is not just about the finished piece, but about the ongoing dialogue between the artist and their materials, their ideas, and their world. By witnessing the work of their professors, students learn that art is a process— one that requires curiosity, patience, and a willingness to challenge oneself. It teaches them that the act of making is, at its core, an act of discovery and self-expression.
In seeing the diverse approaches and techniques represented here, our students are reminded that there is no one "right" way to create art. Each artist’s journey is unique, and every work presented in this exhibition is an invitation to think, feel, and see the world differently. The Biennial not only enriches our artistic community but also reinforces the importance of fostering an environment where new ideas are encouraged and where the making of art is valued as both a personal and collective endeavor.
I extend my heartfelt congratulations to each of the artists featured in this Biennial. Your dedication and passion are an inspiration to all of us, and your work continues to shape and elevate the creative spirit of our college. Thank you for sharing your vision and for teaching our students that the pursuit of art is not just a profession, but a lifelong journey. We are grateful that you share your vision with us, and for your continuing contributions to the vibrant legacy of Dawson College.
Andréa C. Cole Dean, Creative and Applied Arts
It is nothing short of inspiring to work among faculty members who are dedicated teachers and artists, each contributing unique perspectives and approaches to the art world. The 16th Faculty of Fine Arts Biennial showcases the vibrant and varied artistic accomplishments of the teachers from the Department of Fine Arts at Dawson College. Since 1992, the Biennial has provided an opportunity for students to get a glimpse of their teachers’ work outside of the classroom.
The contributions to this exhibition span a variety of media—painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media, and the written word, among others—illustrating a profound engagement with both traditional practices and new technologies. At the core of the many explorations that this exhibition offers are complexities surrounding the environment (both natural and built); the human condition and the relationships that we forge; the material world; and more intangible elements linked to our existence. Through the work, we can gain insight not only into the artists themselves, but also into the evolving artistic landscape that shapes our department.
As educators, the work that we each do in our professional careers outside of Dawson’s walls finds a way to seep into the classroom, hopefully enriching the learning experience of our students. By bridging theory and practice, it is our desire that the outcome of this exhibition will be twofold: to nourish our students in their own work, and to contribute to a larger cultural dialogue within the artistic community.
Enjoy the exhibition!
Amanda Beattie Chairperson / Fine Arts Department Coordinator / Visual Arts Program Art History Teacher
(This text was originally published in Esse, issue 102: Re-seeing Painting, 2021)
A beige abyss. Hot pink solitude, suspended in time. A geometric poem, woven with threads that connect technology, memory, and abstraction. In Antonietta Grassi’s work, all of these separate entities become neatly tied together in a mathematical, painterly, and thoughtful exploration of colour and light; shape and line. But within this orderly unit, there is an undertone of inner turmoil, like a system that has overheated and is in meltdown mode. In Lifelines in the Age of Anxiety, 2020, we are face to face with a machine that is a shell of its former self. Trapped, vibrating in infinite lockdown, it is steeped in its own obsolescence.
The machine and its history are common themes in Grassi’s work. But while acknowledging the sad fate of discarded parts, these machines are anything but disheartening. They are gloriously bright, autonomous beings that seem to be very much alive. It is not simply their form, but also the inner workings of their operating systems that speak to Grassi. Inspiration comes from women mathematicians and computer scientists like Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper. The Jacquard loom, one of the earliest computer systems, also makes its way into Grassi’s practice. Not only do many of her machines resemble its form, but it also provides a link to her roots. Grassi’s mother and aunts worked in the garment industry, and she herself worked as a textile designer. The recurrent threads in her paintings seem to hold these influences and memories together at the seams.
Grassi’s use of colour and the grid speak to the works of women artists from the canon of 20th century modernist abstraction – another coding system in its own right: Helen Frankenthaler and Agnes Martin can be glimpsed underneath the multicoloured horizontal lines. Like Eva Hesse, she adds her own personal touch to a seemingly impersonal subject by imbuing the machine with life and feeling. Her approach to painting is both intuitive and intentional, charged with memory, but also mathematically and technically precise. And there is always an expression of hope and connection, despite the age in which we happen to find ourselves.
Amanda Beattie is the Chair of the Fine Arts Department and the Coordinator of the Visual Arts Program at Dawson College, where she teaches Art History. She also works as an independent art critic, writing for art magazines and artist catalogues. Amanda has a background in museum education from various institutions in Montreal, including the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the Centre internationale d’art contemporain de Montréal, and has worked as a consultant with institutions such as Ciel Variable, the Papier Art Fair, the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Canada Council Art Bank. Her international work experience includes working at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice), and the Biennale di Venezia. Amanda has degrees in Art History from Concordia University (MA) and McGill University (BA). Her goal has always been to make art accessible to all publics, and to empower people in their understanding and appreciation of art in all of its forms.
Using multiple mediums and strategies, David Baumflek’s work investigates the complex layers of mediation embedded in human perception and consciousness. His works combine experiments in fundamental forms with an interest in political and aesthetic theory. After receiving an MFA from Pratt Institute, Baumflek was a studio art fellow in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. His sculptural and performance work has been exhibited in venues such as Art in General (New York), Sculpture Center (New York), Wilson Art Museum (UK), CICA Museum (South Korea), and Exit Art (New York). His video work has been shown in Anthology Film Archives (New York), Festival du Nouveau Cinema (Montreal), Lisbon Architectural Triennial, VideoEx (Zurich), Australian
Experimental Film Festival (Melbourne), Kunstfilmtage (Dusseldorf) and others.
These recent sculptural pieces are the continuation of multi-year experimentations in the field of ceramics. The title (culled from a piece by writer Erin Moure) speaks to the work’s asymptotic relationship to poetry; where meanings and associations resonate from the far shores of form. The pieces in this growing collection are a cast of misfit everyday objects, pitiable evolutionary dead-ends and ritual vessels of no known sect or congregation. They (and I) delight in their ambiguity and futility. Who knows Who eats Who?, 2024 Ceramic Variable dimensions
Joe Becker’s artistic practice encompasses a broad range of mediums, drawing inspiration from a diverse mix of sources. His work delves into the detritus of popular culture, channeling inspiration from horror films, cartoons, comic books, and the icons of youth culture. Becker’s ongoing project, F.R.C., exemplifies this exploration, reimagining familiar symbols and motifs across a broad spectrum of artworks, including drawings, paintings, mask sculptures, and printed books.
Since 2018, Becker has been a faculty member in the Fine Arts Department at Dawson College. He holds an MFA in Drawing and Painting from Concordia University and a BFA from OCAD University. His work has been showcased in prominent art fairs and exhibitions, both solo and group, across cities such as Toronto, New York, Leipzig, Berlin, London, Paris, and Los Angeles.
My practice is multidisciplinary and includes drawing, photography, video, installation, sculpture, textile and print. I am particularly drawn to print as a process and how it integrates within contemporary art. Although my practice is not exclusive to print, print informs my approach to making art. My artwork investigates ideas of love, loss, longing, death and melancholy. Past exhibitions include Love Lost (ARPRIM), Forget Me Not (La Centrale), Secousses (Caravansérail), Ces artistes qui impriment: un regard sur l’estampe au Québec depuis 1940 (Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec), and La disparition (Centre de diffusion Presse Papier).
My maternal grandfather was originally from Vathy, present day Turan (Türkiye) situated on the southern shores of the Sea of Marmara. He fled his birthplace at a very young age
during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 that resulted with the Treaty of Lausanne forcing both Greek Orthodox and Turkish Muslim populations to leave their ancestral homes. Inhabitants from that region were eventually relocated to the Kastoria area near lake Orestiada. This past summer I visited both Vathy/Turan (the village where he was born), and Korissos, the village where he spent most of his life and passed away. Other than the bodies of water, the landscape and vegetation were quite similar.
Architecture is at the heart of my work, offering a lens through which I explore the complex relationship between natural and human-made environments. By engaging with sculptural form and material experimentation, I create opportunities to question concepts like “nature” and “environment,” focusing specifically on how architecture mediates, absorbs, and shapes these ideas.
Recontextualizing architectural concepts within an art practice allows me to probe the spatial and material dynamics that influence these environments. This inquiry not only reflects the broader implications of human intervention but also examines how architecture acts as a tangible mediator between the built and natural worlds.
Central to my practice is the use of re-purposed materials, such as cardboard and shipping pallets. These everyday, often discarded materials challenge conventional notions of value and permanence in architecture. By working with them, I explore how material reuse highlights both the resilience
and fragility of our interaction with the environment. This experimentation reveals the intricate ways human activity shapes—and is shaped by—the physical world around us.
My work also draws inspiration from the counterculture movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, particularly its DIY ethos and radical disregard for convention. Through this historical lens, I explore how certain forms and methods from that era can embody, and perhaps engender, alternative possibilities. By revisiting the visionary architecture of that period, I examine the challenges and potential of translating utopian ideals into built forms, questioning whether transformative ideals can truly be materialized in contemporary structures.
https://www.instagram.com/nina_c_dubois/
For over thirty years, Rachel Echenberg’s artwork has been performed, exhibited and screened across Canada as well as internationally in the United States, Europe, South America and Asia. Her video work is represented by Vidéographe in Montreal and Vtape in Toronto. Echenberg holds a BFA from NSCAD in Canada and an MA in Visual Performance from Dartington College of Arts in the UK. Rachel Echenberg has been faculty in the Fine Arts Department of Dawson College since 2009.
The video series Conversations with my Family attempts to gage the scale, weight, form and force of intimate
Conversation with my Husband, 2020-2022
interactions. This project measures familial connections against a variety of natural setting. Each of the non-verbal one-to-one performances between the artist and her family members structures a portrait of the relationship through endurance and patience. In Conversation with my Husband, two bodies run at each other in a vast empty landscape. At the point of embrace/collision they disappear, leaving only their cloud of dust.
www.rachelechenberg.net
As a kid, Andréanne Godin (1984) used to roam the trails of the Boreal forest at the end of her street. Originally from Val-d’Or (QC), she currently lives and works in Montreal. In 2013 she completed a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from Concordia University and was awarded the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists, nominated by curator Nicole Gingras.
Godin recently took part in several residency programs in Canada and abroad. She has occupied both Quebec Studios
in Finland (2019) and Switzerland (2017). Over the summer of 2016 she was the first Quebec artist to be hosted by the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut (USA). Both federal and provincial art councils have supported her research since 2012.
Over the past fifteen years, Godin’s work has been presented nationally and internationally in Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, the United States, Cuba, and France. She is represented by Galerie Nicolas Robert.
Born in Montreal, Canada, Antonietta Grassi worked as a textile and clothing designer before embarking on her career as an artist. She developed an early interest in abstract painting which deepened during her studies at Concordia University where she studied with Yves Gaucher and received her BFA. She went on to pursue an MFA at l’Université du Québec à Montréal where she developed her interest in redefining abstraction through a feminist perspective.
Her paintings, which often resemble weavings, speak to multiple histories, textiles, the pioneering role of women in technology, labour and the lineage of abstraction. Grassi’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries in Canada, the United States, Europe and the Middle East including the Musée national des beauxarts du Quebec, the Katonah Museum of Art in New York and
the Canadian Pavilion at Expo Dubai. Her paintings can be found in museum, corporate and private collections. Grassi has worked on several public art projects and commissions such as the Cartier Esplanade (Women’s Y Montreal) and the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec.
Grassi is the recipient of multiple grants and prizes including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts. Her work will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museé des beaux arts de Sherbrooke in 2026.
David Hall works in a range of media, notably painting, drawing and model/diorama making. His compositions and built objects are a reflection of the places and experiences that have formed his artist identity. Artistic training took place at Vancouver Community College, Langara, Emily Carr College of Art and Design (BFA) and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (MFA). Hall has been a practicing artist for almost forty years. His artworks have appeared in solo and group exhibitions in many venues across the country, most recently, Open Studio exhibition (2024) and Couloirs maritime – Sea Lanes, Vitrine Atelier Daigneault/Schofield (2023).
As a painter of landscape compositions, choose to combine the real with the imagined to explore the concept of place. My interest in place has led me to create a separate project, The Maritime Picture Gallery, that I started in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic when in isolation. I made my little compositions out of what was at hand in my studio, materials like discarded tin, either cut open, scrapped away paint tubes or salvaged metal. These small paintings are mounted
on black matte board and framed inexpensively. Over the intervening years the series has grown to over 30 small format paintings, which are to be viewed salon style.
This body of work refers back to genre painting collections of the past. In my version I use modest materials, thus questioning the nature and value of those grand collections.
Drawing inspiration from 17th century maritime seascapes to adventure story illustrations of the past, the little picture gallery’s collection of vignettes transports us to an alternative place, one that fuses the past, present and future.
davidhallpainter.ca
In this plurally-leaved piece, drawing encroaches upon painting. With a polyptych, the stack of panels unfolds in discrete, observed moments. In this constellation of dispersed disc-shaped forms, the shapes are potentially tiny or immense, either planetary or plankton-like, looming up or swimming by. A common thread of form-potential links distant physical orders in a moment of quiet distillation— Compact Cosmos, 2024
somewhat like when looking through a microscope or telescope, one finally gets the light and lens angle just right and a focused form appears.
Julianna Joos lives and works in Montréal. She is a printmaker and a fiber artist. She has presented solo exhibitions in Argentina, Australia, Canada and Japan. Julianna Joos holds a Maîtrise ès arts (M.F.A.), from Université du Québec à Montréal, 1996. She presently teaches printmaking, drawing and digital art in the Fine Arts Department at Dawson College. She has won three major international prizes in printmaking and fiber art. Her artworks have been acquired by public collections, la collection Loto-Quebec, la collection de la Ville de Montréal and others as well as private collections.
My themes relate to human condition and to ecology. I follow quests, I share discoveries and I search for solutions, emotional and formal, through my art making. I am looking for a balance between the narrative and the formal, feelings and ideas, traditional techniques, and new technologies.
Chauve-souris XV is a bilateral jacquard weaving, that is reversible; when exhibited the artwork can be viewed from both sides. Chauve-souris XV is from a series of artworks on bats, that I began during a residency in Sydney, Australia. The series is about connections between a story and its representation, between techniques, printmaking, weaving and drawing, between traditional techniques and new technologies, woodcut and jacquard weaving, between positive and negative images. I interconnect images, ideas, and techniques through matrices, to create environments where concepts and techniques bounce repeatedly back and forth.
http://www.julianna.jujoos.net
I have always done my work with playfulness and infused it with irony. Species about to Emerge is a series of drawings shown at Galerie Produit rien in May 2023. My drawing for the Biennial is a part of this series.
Tongue in cheek is my third generation of drawings where I have used a larger scale as a means to push my technique. In the first generation, I had created funky creatures as aggregates of colors and various shapes from the chaos of crumpled paper. As I dug into negative space, I opened a realm for generating different relationships of closeness or division. Unexpected couples started to appear.
More of these drawings will be shown in March 2025. I’m hoping to affect the senses and the intellect as to how diverse and wonderful relationships can be.
Tongue-in-cheek / À langue perdue, 2023
Watercolor pencils
J’ai toujours développé mon travail dans un esprit ludique et ironique. Ma série Espèces en voie d’apparition, a été exposée à la Galerie Produit rien en mai 2023.
À langue perdue fait partie de ma troisième génération de dessins dont l’échelle fait éclore ma technique. Dans la première génération, j’avais inventé des créatures un peu bizarres, des agrégats de formes et couleurs en m’inspirant du chaos des papiers froissés. J’ai découvert qu’en exploitant l’espace négatif de ces créatures suscitait des relations de proximité et d’éloignement. Des couples inattendus sont apparus. J’ai continué à produire ces grands dessins qui seront exposés en mars 2025.
J’aimerais ainsi éveiller nos sens et notre intelligence aux relations humaines magnifiques et variées.
Originally conceived of being a sound work, I started this project using a method I know well: drawing.
A nod to Richard Serra’s Verb List, exploring the idea of art making being performative, I compiled these lists of favorite words while reading the Oxford English Dictionnary (pocket edition.) Most choices are personal and random words were chosen for their sounds, and how they contrast with neighbouring words within each list. Several were chosen for their meanings or origins (French, Italian, Yiddish.) Also included are names (first names of those dear to me.) I was
drawn to this task for its absurdity. Absorbed by the folly in making collections of favorite words, in alphabetical order, for the sheer pleasure of it. The pleasure of distilling a large collection into a personal assemblage.
*The second iteration of this project will be Larousse, 2024; an installation of word lists compiled through the reading of Larousse (2024 pocket edition).
Nadia Moss is an artist and educator based in Tiotia:ke/ Montreal, the city where they formed their political and artistic sensibility outside of most formal art and academic institutions, and where they have been part of art, music and political communities for over twenty years. Their 2013 MFA from York University lead them towards their vocation as a teacher, which they currently do both independently with Queer and Trans Life Drawing, and at Dawson College. Their drawings and installation works have been shown in established galleries and alternative spaces across North America. They’ve published two books of drawings with L’Oie de Cravan, and have contributed drawing and design works to countless albums, posters, and magazines, including Harpers, the Walrus, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Artists Against Law 21 and Musicians for Palestine.
This self portrait is one of many from a forthcoming book of mixed media works on found paper using drawing, collage, traditional jewish papercut, and frottage.
I make these images because I love people and I worry that our beautiful and weird details get flattened in grand historical narratives. I want to keep my attention on our complexity; to the contradictions and ambivalence that we carry. The idea that one’s sense of identity, as well as justice and community, can be concretely, strictly real, yet is utterly contingent. Collage speaks to this because it shows you its own construction, which to me suggests the ways it wasn’t or might be constructed: What you see is provisional and could easily change with blood and sweat or a gentle breeze.
www.instagram.com/mt.nadiamoss/
Natalie Olanick is an artist whose practice comes out of being a painter. Since the conflict in Ukraine began, two and a half years ago, she has examined and painted traditional Ukraine patterns. Her heritage is a mix of Estonia and Ukraine, so traditions of both cultures were celebrated in her youth. The paintings are a reminiscing as well as acknowledgement about how traditions have changed, been broken and can become something else. The translucent quality of the paint clearly shows the materials mixed with fragments of opaque symbols. A large egg form with a slightly cracked side, holds pattern and colours that hint at stories of the past, while grey lines shape letters of a language. The work puts forward the notion of transformation as a human quality that can be glimpsed at but never completely tamed.
Her work has been shown across Canada and internationally.
She also has curated exhibitions and had writings published on various artists' works.
A couple of recent group exhibitions that she has participated in include La guerre ça sert à quoi? Absolutment rien... (Résistances) / War, What Is It Good For, Absolutely Nothing... (Resistance), in the summer of 2022 at Galerie LaRoche/Joncas, and 40x40, in 2023, at Gallery 1313 in Toronto.
natalieolanick.com
My recent papercut works are compelled by material curiosity and the meditative benefits of the medium. I often explore themes such as cyclical forces, ephemerality and memory as embodied and multi-faceted – also, I am learning to allow the character of the paper to guide the direction of the work. Sensory attunement, particularly while walking, is a co-creative and generative process that inspires much of my work.
For over a decade, I developed community art projects with youth that focused on (in)tangible cultural heritage, as well as curatorial projects and participatory audio walks that
highlighted the interconnections between oral history and contemporary art. As an art history teacher, I see inspiration in my work from many artists, since rock art until the present, who I am grateful to learn about with my students. My art and research have been presented in Québec, Banff, Vancouver, New York, Brussels, and Lisbon.
Kristi Ropeleski is a Montreal-based artist and teacher. Her paintings have been exhibited at Skol, articule, The Philoctetes Center for the Study of the Imagination in New York City and at the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art. She studied at Dawson College, Concordia University and has a Master’s degree in Visual Art from York University. She has received grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts. Currently, she teaches painting and drawing at Dawson College.
Jackson Slattery was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1983. In this most recent body of work, Slattery is reducing his subject matter to light, providing a detailed visual diary that is devoid of context. Using centuries old, traditional oil glazing methods, Slattery considers the passage of light through pigment and oil.
Bahar Taheri is an Iranian-Canadian visual artist based in Montreal. Born in Tehran in 1980, she earned an MFA in painting from Soore Art University in 2009. Taheri has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions across Iran, Canada, and Europe, where she has also participated in several artist residencies. She has received grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Montreal Intercultural Arts, and the Montréal Arts Council. Her work is included in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and various private collectors. In 2019, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts selected one of her works to represent 20 years of their Sharing the Museum Program.
Bahar Taheri explores contemporary concerns through painting, video, and mixed-media installations. Her practice delves into issues of identity, collective memory, and the historical events that shape our socio-political
circumstances. In her recent work, Taheri deconstructs buildings—folding and unfolding monumental walls—until binaries, absolutes, and hierarchies dissolve, creating a rupture from reality. She envisions a utopian universe at the intersection of multiple countries, cultures, and beliefs, manifesting a unity that subsists behind differences and divisions. Subtly, she transitions from figuration to geometric abstraction, inviting viewers to reconsider the boundaries between form and meaning.
Website: bahartaheri.com Instagram @bahartist.
Objects carry stories, bearing witness to the passage of time and life. Through my sculptures, I explore the metonymic qualities of objects and their connections to material culture, craft, nature, and memory. I employ traditional sculpting techniques, such as wood and stone carving. Materials transformed by the touch of a hand possess an evocative and poetic power that can revive memories, tell stories, or stimulate affects. I draw inspiration from unwritten narratives, particularly those related to women's history. My goal is to create objects that inspire wonder, allowing reality, memory, and imagination to intersect.
Ingrid Syage Tremblay is a Syrian-Canadian artist. She holds a Master’s degree in Sculpture from the University of Texas at Austin, a BFA from Concordia University and a Bachelor and Master of Sciences from l'Université de Montréal. Her recent exhibitions have taken place at Galerie B-312, Grand Palais Éphémère (Paris), Apexart (New York), CIRCA art actuel (Montreal), Chiguer Contemporary (Quebec and Montreal) and the Agnes Etherington Art Center (Kingston, Canada). She has also participated in artist residencies at Est-Nord-Est (Saint-Jean-Port-Joli), NARS Foundation (New York), Carving Studio and Sculpture Center (Vermont), Djerassi Resident Artist Program (California), ACRE Project (Chicago), and Vermont Studio Center. Her awards and distinctions include the VCU Fountainhead Fellowship in Sculpture, the UT Graduate School Recruitment Fellowship, FRQSC, and several grants from CALQ and the Canada Council for the Arts. The artist lives and works in Montreal, where she teaches in the Fine Arts Department at Dawson College.
https://ingridtremblay.com/
In my experience, teaching is a form of curating and is my creative practice. It includes selecting artworks and artists that illustrate the narrative and exemplify the concepts we are presenting to students in a compelling and efficient manner; connecting art historical and current events with visual manifestations, while also providing tools for how to ‘read’ this visual language; and encouraging interdisciplinarity and analytical skills, which art history can help develop in young students. When encouraged to look more closely at the world around us, one realises that visual culture is interconnected with all parts of our lives. Creativity is the heart of every society, and along with critical thinking, is the utmost transversal skill. In this era of encroaching AI technologies, I make it my mission to ask students to think for themselves, to reflect, to analyze, and to feel something. Art provides an opening for discussing myriad topics; art allows for distance to exist between the viewer and the subject depicted or expressed. This distance can be useful when addressing difficult subjects. Best of all, art can provide students with moments of pleasure, contemplation, and inspiration, among the pressures and anxieties that seem to increasingly characterize their academic journeys.
Teaching also involves listening, adjusting, caring, constantly researching, grading, and patience. Working with students is as exhausting as it is rewarding. I feel the need to express my admiration for my colleagues who manage to teach and simultaneously nourish an artistic or research and writing practice. I don’t
know how they do it, but I am ever so grateful for the inspiration it provides for students and myself.
I have taught Art History at Dawson College since 2013. My academic background includes studies in the Liberal Arts (Dawson Alumni), Anthropology (McGill), and Art History (Concordia). I have a background in art and museum education, with ten years of experience at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The way I teach art history is exhibition-based, with an emphasis on curatorial practices and critical analysis.
Diane Gauvin, Director General
Andréa C. Cole, Dean of Creative and Applied Arts
Leanne Bennett, Academic Dean
Bassel Atallah, Associate Dean of Creative and Applied Arts
Amanda Beattie, Chair of the Fine Arts Department and Coordinator of the Visual Arts Program
Natalie Olanick and Fine Arts Faculty, Biennial 16 Exhibition team
Éloïse Cartier, Graphic Designer
Helen Wawrzetz, Administrative Support Agent
Rhonda Meier, Warren G. Flowers Administrative Officer
Matthew St. Marie, Printshop (catalogue, poster and invitation)
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Fine Arts Faculty Biennial 16. Names: Fine Arts Faculty Biennial (16th 2025 : Montréal, Québec), author. | Cole, Andréa, 1965- writer of foreword Beattie, Amanda, 1979- writer of introduction Dawson College, publisher. | Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery, host institution. Description: Texts by Andréa Cole, Amanda Beattie. Companion publication to the Fine Arts Faculty Biennial 16 exhibition held at the Warren G. Flowers Art Gallery, Dawson College, Montréal, Québec from February 6 to March 25 2025. | Includes index. Identifiers: Canadiana 20240525396 ISBN 9781550169850 (softcover) Subjects: LCSH: Dawson College. Fine Arts Department—Faculty—Exhibitions. LCSH: Art, Canadian— Québec (Province)—Montréal—21st century—Exhibitions. | LCGFT: Exhibition catalogs. Classification: LCC N6547. M65 F58 2025 | DDC 709.714/2807471428—dc23
