DOCUMENTAIRE EN DERIVE Exhibition On View at Montréal, Arts Interculturels) March 17 – April 16

The exhibition Documentaire en dérive by Lebanese-Montreal visual artist Nayla Dabaji will be presented in the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) gallery from March 17 to April 16, 2022.

Artist Nayla Dabaji is driven by an interest in migration, temporality and the way mobility and lack of information can destabilize our daily lives and alter our perception of the world. Documentaire en dérive is an examination of the creative process behind her video Boomerang.

A work that can be interpreted on a number of levels, it captures the ambiguous and polymorphous nature of memory, taking as its point of departure the phenomenon of being out of sync - a lag caused as much by the delay of electronic transmission as by reminiscence of the past. Fascinated by the traces of ourselves we leave behind, the Lebanese-Montreal artist explores these experiential fragments through photography, art installation, video and text, juxtaposing different histories, geographies and narrative structures.

Beirut-born artist Nayla Dabaji currently lives and works in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal. She studied fine arts in Lebanon, media arts in Quebec and is currently studying herbalism. Her projects combine a variety of practices, ranging from photography, drawing and video art to art intervention and writing. Her video work is distributed by Videographe in Montreal.

In 2020, she was the winner of the Impressions residency at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Her recent work has been presented at Vaste et Vague (Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie, 2021), l'Imagier Art Center (Gatineau, 2019), Dazibao (dv-vd, Montreal, 2017) and at several festivals - including: Les Percéides (Percé, 2021, 2018), le Festival de la poésie de Montréal (2020), Les Instants Vidéo (Marseille, 2019, 2015, 2014), the international Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) (Montreal, 2017), the Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma (35th edition, Montreal, 2015) and Stuttgarter Filmwinter (Stuttgart, 2015). Her collaborative projects have also been shown in various galleries, institutions and art spaces - such as: Espace Libre (Biel, 2016), Vu Photo (Quebec City, 2013), Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne, 2012), Artsonje Center (Seoul, 2011), Townhouse Gallery (Cairo, 2009).

Learn more at www.m-a-i.qc.ca/en/boxoffice.