Artist Anahita Norouzi is presenting Rift at Galerie de l’UQAM and Musée d’art de Joliette, the result of a collaboration that will continue through 2030 as part of a Canadian touring exhibition
Anahita Norouzi, To Swallow the Sun (video still), 2026, 3-channel immersive video, colour, sound, 40 min
Curators: Louise Déry, Ariane De Blois Dates: November 6, 2026 — January 16, 2027 Opening: Thursday, November 5, 2026, 5:30 p.m.
October 26, 2026 — Galerie de l’UQAM and Musée d’art de Joliette are joining forces to present Anahita Norouzi. Rift. By delving into the depths of Iran’s oil history, Anahita Norouzi reveals the fracture left by extraction and, from its ruins, brings to light the possibility of a different future. Organized into six chapters (Chapters I and II at Musée d’art de Joliette from October 3, 2026, to January 10, 2027; III, IV, V, and VI at Galerie de l’UQAM, from November 6, 2026, to January 16, 2027), the exhibition brings together large-scale film projections and new sculptural installations. It invites the public to examine the promises of the energy transition and the persistence of colonial power, and to reinvent imaginaries in order to rethink our relationship to resources, consumption, and living beings.
Anahita Norouzi, To Swallow the Sun (video still), 2026, 3-channel immersive video, colour, sound, 40 min
The Exhibition
“How can one garden in the ruins of empires as a gesture towards the future?” This question by Anahita Norouzi runs through Rift.
Anahita Norouzi, To Swallow the Sun (video still), 2026, 3-channel immersive video, colour, sound, 40 min
The title evokes a fracture, a depression, or even a tear in the earth’s crust—an image that aptly conveys the exhibition’s theme, in which the past, like an active fault, continues to permeate the present. Using the history of oil exploitation in southwestern Iran as its point of departure, the exhibition explores how oil extraction, under the guise of “progress,” has damaged the land, transforming it into a spectral space marked by ecological ruins and dispossession. Adopting a “counter-prospecting” approach, Norouzi goes against the current to probe a vast body of archives (films, photographs, postcards, books) related to the Masjed Soleyman Oil Field and the Abadan Refinery in order to unearth hidden layers. From one work to the next, she seeks to bring to light how oil and cultural infrastructures (like cinema) have been jointly used on Iranian soil to subjugate bodies and minds.
Anahita Norouzi, To Swallow the Sun (video still), 2026, 3-channel immersive video, colour, sound, 40 min
Several motifs—ruin, pipeline, fire, and water—irrigate the exhibition: the ruin as a vestige of the promise of progress left without a future, the pipeline as a network that connects and divides all at once, fire as a force that we can never completely control, and water as both a condition of survival and bodily sweat.
“Although rooted in a particular historical and geopolitical context, the project resonates in a disturbing way with the present era, marked by the rise of imperialism, the relentless pursuit of resource extraction, ecological collapse, and the fabrication of images in the service of power. In the face of these dark times, Rift dismantles narratives of domination, reaching back to the past in search of new cosmogonies through which to imagine different alignments between bodies, territories, and images.” — Ariane De Blois and Louise Déry, curators of the exhibition.
La traduction de la phrase : The project will be exhibited at Galerie UQO (Gatineau, 2027), VOART (Val-d’Or, 2028), and Contemporary Calgary (Alberta, 2030).
Anahita Norouzi, To Swallow the Sun (video still), 2026, 3-channel immersive video, colour, sound, 40 min
About the Artist
Crédit photo: Sean Spector
Anahita Norouzi is a multidisciplinary artist, working between Tehran and Montreal. Her practice is research-driven, examining the entanglement of colonial histories, extraction, and human relationships to land. Articulated across video, sculpture, installation, and photography, her work challenges institutional authority by reclaiming personal narratives and collective memories embedded in archives, museum collections, and herbarium pages, ultimately dissecting how power operates through systems of classification, representation, and historical erasure.
Her work has been presented at institutions including the National Gallery of Canada, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Montreal Museum of Contemporary Arts, Royal Ontario Museum, Ashmolean Museum, and Villa Medici. She was a finalist for the 2023 Sobey Art Award and recipient of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec Contemporary Art Award. In 2026, she was a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands.
Ariane De Blois, who holds a Ph.D. in art history from McGill University, is the curator of collections and exhibitions at Musée d’art de Joliette. From 2020 to 2024, she served as artistic and editorial director of Plein Sud art actuel. She has curated more than twenty exhibition projects in Quebec and internationally, including the group exhibition P for Palestine, presented at Plein sud in 2024, as well as the retrospective COZIC: Over to You. From 1967 to Now, presented at Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in 2019. A recipient of the 2024 Recension critique award from the Société de développement des périodiques culturels québécois (SODEP), her writings have been published in several specialized journals and magazines. Among other projects, she edited the monographs SHEEN-wah-ZREE, dedicated to the artist Karen Tam, and Residues, dedicated to Chih-Chien Wang.
Louise Déry (Ph.D. in art history) has been director of Galerie de l’UQAM since 1997. Previously, she worked as a curator at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and was the director of the Musée de Rimouski. She has organized some 100 exhibitions and published as many publications in Canada and abroad devoted to David Altmejd, Rober Racine, Nancy Spero, Dominique Blain, Sarkis, Françoise Sullivan, Michael Snow, Jean-Luc Nancy, Enrique Ramírez, and Emmanuelle Léonard, to name but a few. She has received several awards and distinctions, including the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award of Excellence for Curating Contemporary Art (2007), the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2015), the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France (2017), the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec (2021), and the Ordre national du Québec (2023).
Public Activities
Exhibition Tour with Louise Déry, Ariane De Blois, and Anahita Norouzi Monday, November 9, 2026, 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. In French Free admission
As part of the L’art observe series, Galerie de l’UQAM invites the public to a friendly tour of the exhibition organized by Louise Déry and Ariane De Blois, featuring Anahita Norouzi. The event will give visitors the opportunity to discuss with the artist and curators the issues raised by the project: the history of the oil industry in Iran, the role of cinema in shaping narratives, and memory as a force of resistance.
Film Program In collaboration with the Cinémathèque québécoise Friday, January 15, 2027, 6 – 8 p.m. 335, De Maisonneuve Blvd. East, Montreal Limited seating
Details to come
With the artist Anahita Norouzi
Educational Program
The cultural mediators of Galerie de l’UQAM will be offering guided tours of the Anahita Norouzi. Rift exhibition to groups and faculty members. Flexible and open to all school and community groups, the tours can be adapted to meet particular needs and to complement material covered in the classroom, if needed. These activities are offered free of charge, in French or English.
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