In Praise of the Missing Image: Galerie de l’UQAM joins forces with MOMENTA to present solo exhibitions by the artists Raphaël Barontini, Gabrielle Goliath, and Caroline Mauxion.
Guest Curator: Marie-Ann Yemsi
Dates: September 5 – October 25, 2025
Opening: September 4, 2025, 5:30 p.m.
Montreal, August 13, 2025 – From September 5 to October 25, Galerie de l’UQAM will present solo exhibitions by the artists Raphaël Barontini, Gabrielle Goliath, and Caroline Mauxion, whose works invite us to imagine, together, political and poetic ways to inhabit the impasses of the present by sketching out paths to the future.
In a world saturated with images, some, strangely, are lacking. This edition of MOMENTA aims to open up multiple perspectives for experimentation and speculation on the nature, uses, and production of missing images. With a focus on what is beyond our view – the silences and breaches in individual and collective memory – In Praise of the Missing Image explores both contemporary challenges in relation to the image and the current consequences of the complex dynamics involved in constructing narratives. Which stories are told, how, and by whom?
The exhibitions
Raphaël Barontini (France and Guadeloupe)
Twòn Kreyol
Twòn Kreyol unfolds a space where memory intertwines with dream. Through collage and assemblage, Raphaël Barontini combines the iconography of art history, colonial-era ethnographic photographs, and sculptural objects such as West African masks and sacred artefacts to create portraits, costumes, and frescoes inspired by carnival parades and rites of resistance. Barontini focuses on several emblematic figures in the struggle against slavery, setting them in tension with the mechanisms of their erasure from official history—thereby examining the power relations at play in representation.
Gabrielle Goliath (South Africa)
Elegy – for two ancestors
Gabrielle Goliath’s video and sound installation is part of a long-term performative series that undertakes collective mourning for women and LGBTQIA+ individuals lost to patriarchal violence. It commemorates two Nama women who were displaced and killed during the Ovaherero and Nama Genocide (1904–08) perpetrated by the German colonial regime in Namibia. One by one, seven opera singers sustain a single note over the course of an hour, creating a space for shared grief and radical refusal. This sonic vigil becomes a political act of remembrance and love in which the public is invited to take part.
Caroline Mauxion (Canada and France)
Must Every Step Touch the Ground?
In an exhibition at the intersection of care and desire, Caroline Mauxion — PhD candidate in art studies and practices, UQAM — explores the ways in which the body is constrained, supported, or transformed. Grounded in an autotheoretical, crip, and queer approach, she interrogates the norms that shape our embodied experiences. Drawing on her own history, she reflects on what deviates, on what is not straight, and proposes a gaze anchored in the lived experience of disability. Her works, inspired by orthopedic language, closely intertwine image, material, and corporeal memory to expose the mechanisms of normalization that structure bodies and desires.
MOMENTA Creative – Activities surrounding exhibitions at Galerie de l’UQAM
The Biennale includes the MOMENTA Creative program, a series of educational activities, creative workshops, and guided tours. Each activity, organized in relation to the Biennale’s theme, is free of charge and offered to groups, families, and individuals. Designed with a concern for inclusion and representativeness, our program conveys our desire to provide innovative cultural mediation.
Guided tours of the exhibitions for groups
Available on reservations for groups from September 10 to October 25
Free of charge
Plural bodies Workshop
Available on reservation for groups from September 10 to October 25
Open to the public on Saturday, September 27, at 12 p.m. and Saturday, October 18, at 2 p.m. (no reservation required)
Offered in Quebec Sign Language (LSQ) and led by Hodan Youssouf, artist and cultural mediator (with reservation), Thursday, October 9, at 1:30 p.m.
Free of charge
What do you think about the standards associated with bodies? Through writing exercises and group discussions, participants will deconstruct representations of the body that have been fixed over time and persist today. This workshop is intended to be a space open to all shapes and types of bodies, and it aims to develop empathy for physical diversity.
Heroic Figures Reinvented Workshop
Available on reservation for groups from September 10 to October 25
Open to the public on Saturday, September 27, at 4 p.m. and Saturday, October 18, at 4 p.m. (no reservation required)
Free of charge
What would the past look like if it were reinvented by those who have been forgotten? How do we define heroes and heroines? As a group, you’ll reflect on a history of humanity in which these heroes and heroines play a decisive role and share your vision of the world with your peers.
Visit in Motion
Available on reservation for groups from September 10 to October 25
Open to the public on Saturday, September 27, at 2 p.m.
Free of charge
Connect with the artworks through motion. These guided visits place body language at the core of the experience. Through motion, you connect with yourself and others, with the works and the space. You don’t need to know how to dance, you just have to be ready to move.
INDEX reading room
From September 5 to October 25
Tuesday to Saturday, 12 – 6 p.m.
In collaboration with MOMENTA, Myrabelle Charlebois presents INDEX, a reading room where the public can discover a selection of art books related to the issues explored in this edition of the Biennale. This activity is made possible thanks to support of Idea Books, the UQAM design/visual and media arts library, and participating publishers.
About MOMENTA
MOMENTA Biennale d’art contemporain is a flagship Montreal event that, every two years, invites artists and audiences to gather in the city’s museums, galleries, and artist-run centres. For 35 years, it has produced exhibitions, public events, and educational workshops that introduce participants to local and international artists whose works pique curiosity and stimulate reflection.
The Biennale’s full schedule of activities is available here.momentabiennale.com
Support by
Upcoming exhibitions at Galerie de l’UQAM: galerie.uqam.ca/en/statut/upcoming/
Address and opening hours
Galerie de l’UQAM
Judith-Jasmin Pavilion, Room J-R120
1400 Berri, corner of Sainte-Catherine East, Montreal
Berri-UQAM Metro
Free admission
Tuesday to Saturday, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Free admission
Information
Tel. : 514 987-6150
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Press Relations
Stéphanie Culakowa
stephanie.culakowa@rugicomm.ca
Tél. : 514 245-1417
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Source :
Julie Meunier
Communication Officer
Press Relations and Special Events Division
Communications Service
Tel.: 514 987-3000, ext. 1707
Cell.: 514 895-0134
meunier.julie@uqam.ca