image+nation LGBT2SQueer Film Festival: Top Picks

Still from A Bird Hit My Window and Now I’m a Lesbian, directed by Carmela Marie Murphy + AJ Dubler

Tonight marks the opening of image+nation, Canada’s first LGBT2SQ+ film festival, now in its 37th year! This iconic festival continues to provide a platform for sharing the stories and experiences of LGBT2SQ+ voices. This year’s stellar lineup features exciting new and recurring film categories such as Indigiqueer, Focus Acadie, & Zeitgeist, to name a few.

The festival kicks off with the film Queer, directed by Luca Guadagnino of Call Me By Your Name fame. We don’t know about you but that is certainly enough for us to know we’ll want to be seated in that theatre, ready for heartbreak Luca!

Beyond opening night, there’s an incredible lineup of films to discover, and we’ve put together a list of works that are really jumping out at us this year.

Running from November 20th to November 30th, image+nation offers both virtual screenings and in-cinema screenings at venues including UQAM, Concordia, Cinéma du Musée, Éspace ONF, and the PHI Centre.

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Still from A Mother Apart, directed by Laurie Townshend

A Mother Apart

We have been eagerly anticipating A Mother Apart ever since its appearance at Vancouver Queer Film Festival earlier this year. This documentary follows Staceyann Chin — a mother, poet, activist, lesbian, and more — as she grapples with her most challenging identity: the role of “daughter”.

While raising her own child, Staceyann struggles to reconcile the pain of being excluded from her mother’s life. Exploring themes of forgiveness, motherhood, and the lengths we go for love, this film seems to offer a deeply moving contemplation on family and healing.

We are excited to see what this powerful piece has in store!

A Mother Apart is screening in person at NFB's Alanis Obomsawin Theatre on November 30th at 5:00pm and is available online from November 20th to 30th.

Tickets

A Mother Apart

Trailer

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Still from “Bubbling”, directed by Chang Che-Ming

Focus Beijing: Friends from Afar

In collaboration with the Beijing Queer Film Festival, image+nation presents a selection of LGBT2SQ+ films that explore the nuanced challenges and joys of queer life within the context of Chinese culture, where traditional values often intersect with contemporary expressions of identity. Among the films we’re most excited to see is the documentary feature Mama Rainbow, which profiles six mothers who once held more conservative views—one of whom believed being gay was just a 'fad' but now openly embraces her lesbian daughter. Another standout is the Taiwanese short Bubbling, which tells the story of a young boy in a school choir who becomes drawn to a new student.

Focus Beijing films are playing online-only and you can watch the entire collection at the link below.

Tickets

Focus Beijing: Friends from Afar

Mama Rainbow Trailer | Bubbling Trailer

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Still from “La Rivière”, directed by Élise Levy

Sapphic Shorts

An unofficial category at image+nation this year, but a category in our Also Cool hearts nonetheless — looking through this year’s image+nation catalogue with a sapphic lens, there is no shortage of enticing options to explore.

Looking for campy New York sorcery? Don’t miss Bushwitches. Prefer lonely lesbian gas station voyeurism? Ephemera could be for you. For a deeper dive into history, Old Lesbians captures oral ‘herstories’ from elder lesbians in the United States.

If your taste leans toward stories of love interrupted by tradition, If follows lesbian romance disrupted by an arranged marriage. For something whimsical, A Bird Hit My Window and Now I’m a Lesbian, an animated short, turns a bird funeral into lesbian introspection. Meanwhile, La Rivière follows Catholic schoolgirls who skip class, enticed to jump in the river together.

Spurs Night queers may not want to miss Stud Country, which delves into the history of the largest queer country-western line-dancing event in America — and how gentrification is threatening this vital space.

And finally (there are so many good ones!), The Boxing Ring chronicles the journey of a Filipino-Canadian Muay Thai competitor as she navigates falling in love with her coach.

All shorts are available online from Nov 20th-30th. Passes are available to purchase also if you are looking to watch all sapphic shorts available like we are ;)

Tickets

Sapphic Shorts

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Still from Drone, directed by Simon Bouisson

Drone

For fans of eerie, unsettling films, Drone reminds us of Thelma, another dystopic sapphic classic. The story follows Émilie, a student in the Paris suburbs, whose life is underconstant surveillance—from her drone (which pays her to follow her every move) to her peers and her camera. As she navigates a budding relationship with a classmate and the pressures of fitting in with her “filthy rich” counterparts, Émilie is forced to confront the blurred boundaries between autonomy and exploitation.

Drone is screening at UQAM | Salle de projection Jean-Claude Lauzon Friday, November 29th at 9:00pm.

Tickets

Drone

Trailer

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Still from Gigi, directed by Cynthia Calvi

A Question of Gender - Shorts

Our final category to check out is A Question of Gender — a beautiful inquiry and one we are ready to explore from every angle.

From the perspective of transition, Dreams of Sunlight through Trees documents a middle-aged trans man who transitions at 44 set against the grim backdrop of an ongoing wave of anti-trans legislation (sadly not a work of dystopian fiction).

If gender and romance are more your speed, All Boys Do might be the pick for you — following a trans drag queen who reconnects with an old flame for a weekend.

Or for a self-discovery journey, Gigi, an animated short, follows a tender story of a mermaid finding her own gender identity.

The full collection of short films is available online at the link below.

Tickets

A Question of Gender

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image+nation

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Also Cool Teams Up with Congrego for Coriolis: 5 Years of Fun

Coriolis: 5 Years of Fun poster by Congrego

Ottawa Also Cools: if you know what’s hot and happening in our not-so-sleepy city, you KNOW that Congrego is responsible for some of the best parties around. From Palingenesis to the Clubhouse series—and so much more—Congrego knows how to put on a show, and we remain grateful to learn from (and work with!) such immensely talented people.

Which is why we’re super excited to share that Congrego’s fifth birthday party is right around the corner… and we’re part of the festivities! Coriolis: 5 Years of Fun promises to be another show-stopping event, taking place on Friday, July 5th at both Club SAW and City at Night. This double-whammy of an evening features an incredible roster of acts from across the 613 and beyond.

Starting the night off at Club SAW and the SAW Courtyard, you’ll find a vibrant mix of performances from KAY-fayb, Nick Schofield, ilybo, Franki, Los3r (with special guests maxdout, mystel, and tonguetiedd), J Chinnasz & Nycky Ghost, and RHOZE (curated by the Pass the Vibes Collective). Plus, you’ll find yourself surrounded by visuals from Shini.

As the summer sun fades away, you can then scoot over to City at Night for high-octane sets from Maxed Visa, Ekitwanda, Russ Plus, Spencer Cuddington & Hibo Lagerfeld, with a second appearance by ilybo.

But wait – we’re not done! What’s a Congrego event without some commemorative merch? You can take home a keepsake Coriolis tee for $35, available in sizes M-XXL. Old Congrego merch will also be up for grabs at $10 or available for free with the purchase of a new shirt.

Okay… almost done. If you’re a fan of what we do here at AC, you can show some love and support our operations by buying a deadstock Also Cool tee for $10. Limited sizes, limited quantities – arrive early to take your pick!

Come one, come all to party it up Congrego-style. Snag your ticket for $20 advance at the link below!

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Congrego

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Rebecca Judd is the features editor of Also Cool Mag.

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Pique Spring 2024: The Unexpected and Experimental at Three-day Ottawa Multimedia Arts Festival

Photo by Valerie Boucher

Four times a year, Ottawa arts organizer Debaser hosts Pique, a “forward-thinking” festival featuring a mix of musical, visual, and multimedia artists, both locally and internationally known. 

Their spring 2024 edition was held last weekend from March 8-10 at the Ottawa Arts Court. It was their first time hosting the event over multiple days and their biggest yet. Not only did the event showcase various acts well into the night, but it also hosted a mixture of workshops and installations, leaning into their theme of “experimentation, exploration, and expecting the unexpected.”

The festival kicked off with Topique, a series of artist talks and workshops held throughout the weekend. Attendees had the opportunity to delve deeper into the ideas and processes behind the artists' groundbreaking work, exploring topics such as digital and analogue sound production techniques, mindful listening, womanhood and representation, and improvisation. Among these sessions were workshops led by international artists Maria Chávez, Val Jeanty, and Maylee Todd, who each also performed in the main lineup. Friday’s sessions, held on International Women’s Day, included panel discussions with artists including Zineb Allaoui and LuCille whose exhibit “Elusive Illusion: A Review of the Nude African Form” was on display all weekend. 

Part of the greatness of Pique is you don’t always know what you’re going to get, but you go along for the ride anyway. The building filled up throughout Saturday into the night, as attendees wandered around, experiencing a variety of atmospheres and acts across the venue's different rooms.

Nordting by Valerie Boucher

At 6:30 p.m., Nordting, ”a nomadic people’s parliament of the North” and “separatist movement for the Arctic colony” was engaging the crowd at the Club SAW stage while signs on the front doors of the building warned those entering of a “strong scent of fish.” Their show is part-rousing PowerPoint, part-throat singing talent, and part-immersive experience as they beat drums with frozen fish and encourage the crowd to vote on various motions before hugging the strangers beside them.

Meanwhile, in a nearby room, Montreal duo Echönymphia, consisting of pianist Vivian Li and harpist Coralie Gauthier. blends harp and synth into ethereal sounds. Attendees watched the show relaxing on the floor as the pink and orange lights flickered on stage. 

Maria Chávez by Valerie Boucher

In a seated theatre, abstract turntablist Maria Chávez kicked off her installation "Topography of Sound" by inviting attendees of her earlier workshop to break a collection of records. The records were picked up at a local store, something she does in every city she performs in. Throughout her set, she incorporated those broken pieces into her music, creating an eclectic mix of mystery audio, voices, and beats.

By 9:30 PM, Club SAW is filled with a crowd dancing and drinking to disco duo TUSH while Norwegian visual artist, chanter, and musician Marita Isobel Solberg is playing in another room. The crowd built up throughout the night, with DJ digital polyglot closing it out with a packed set “inspired by space and other worlds” at 1 AM.

TUSH by Valerie Boucher

Pique highlights the diversity of Ottawa's arts scene, showcasing local talents like N'nerjie, Queenyy, and Dimitri Georgaras while bringing in unique artists from around the world. The range of acts and crowded rooms at Pique highlights the talent coming to and out of Ottawa and the thirst that people in the city have for these kinds of experiences.

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Pique

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Debaser

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Valerie Boucher is a writer based in Ottawa, Canada. You can follow her on Instagram and learn more at valerieboucher.ca.

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She's Late // A Circus Show - Witnessing the World of Double Fantasy

Image by Document original

She's Late // A Circus Show by Double Fantasy is an experimental circus performance that blends dance and performance art to create a surreal and immersive experience. The show comprises two acts: an improvisation portion and the main dance performance.

During the improvisation portion, the performers explore different characters, outfits, and scenic devices while manipulating objects and exploring the theme of gravity. One character emerges from a giant, fuzzy egg shape with water sacks, while another plays with a hanging contraption of balloons. The performers manipulate different pieces around the stage, even sawing some of them open. The lighting and stage setting are equally impressive, with bold choices of color and a sense of randomness that added to the surreal atmosphere. The audience is treated to a unique experience of absurdity and visual spectacle, culminating in a captivating dance performance in the second act.

The stage setting and colors of the performance also caught my attention. The use of bold colors and random objects, such as the giant balloons and water sacks, added to the overall surreal and dreamlike atmosphere. The lighting was set beautifully, with different colors and intensities used to complement each scene. The combination of the stage design and lighting created a visually stunning experience that enhanced the overall impact of the performance.

Image by Document original

The main performance is a mesmerizing dance piece that sees the performers balance giant balloons over a fan, bounce water balloons up and down on a pulley, and use harnesses to move across the stage. The water balloon scene is particularly awe-inspiring, as the performers bounce the balloons up and down in a perfectly synchronized manner. The performers show incredible physical strength and coordination, seamlessly combining dance and circus performance. One performer even rises up on a harness upstage while another is naked on top of giant balloons.

She's Late // A Circus Show is a unique and thought-provoking performance that explores themes of impossibility, surprise, and tension. The performers share a complicity with the place, the objects, the scenography, and the public, creating a shared experience that blurs the boundaries between performance and reality. Nien Tzu Weng and Camille Lacelle-Wilsey are "soft clowns" who use their illogical gestures and misunderstandings to create an amusing and welcoming atmosphere, despite the surreal and absurd actions taking place on stage.

The artists’ unique perspectives and styles left a lasting impression on me, and I can't wait to see what they create next. For anyone who missed this show, I highly recommend following these artists to keep up with their future endeavors. It's clear that they have a lot to offer, and I'm excited to see where they go from here.

Image by Document original

Double Fantasy is comprised of two artists, Nien Tzu Weng & Camille Lacelle-Wilsey:

Nien Tzu Weng is a Taiwanese-Canadian interdisciplinary dance artist and lighting designer based in Tio'tia:ke-Montreal. She aims to build bridges between disciplines, pursuing an experimental approach to contemporary performance, and a laboratory based approach to lighting design. As both choreographer and lighting designer, Weng is curious about the relationship between movement and new media practices, and plays with the balance between reality and fantasy. She uses light and multimedia in order to play with perspective, perceiving performance as a process of transmitting dialogues between inner and outer space, where presence and image builds multiple, overlapping conceptions of time. Her projects have been shared in Node Digital Festival (Frankfurt, DE), Biennale Némo (Paris, FR), Ars Electronica (Linz, AUT), Les Percéides (Percé, QC), SummerWorks (Toronto, ON), 1-act SHIFT Theatre (Vancouver, BC) as well as OFFTA Festival, Elektra, Akousma, Tangente Danse, La Chapelle, and MAI Theatre in Montreal. She co-created the collective: Double Fantasy and is currently a member of LePARC (Milieux), one of the supported emerging artists with CCOV, as well as a resident artist at Topological Media Lab, where she develops her research on presence and interactivity. 

Camille Lacelle-Wilsey is a contemporary dance artist originally from Tiohtià:ke/Montreal and newly based in the Eastern Townships. After graduating from Concordia University with a BFA in contemporary dance, she continued her choreographic research, focusing on interference, transformation and sudden change of state. Since 2015, she has presented her creations Come a Bit Closer, Ghostbox, Dispositif and D'amour ils se gaveront, de haine ils déborderont at Tangente. She is currently in creation for the She's late - A Circus Show with her sidekick Nien Tzu Weng with whom she created the Double Fantasy collective. She has just presented a solo performance exhibition entitled Radiant  Investigation combining photography and dance at the VAV Gallery. In parallel to creation, she is interested in the creative process as a videographer, rehearsal director, member of a selection jury, movement consultant and performer-researcher. She has worked with artists such as Sara Hanley, Louis Clément Da Costa, Émile Pineault, Erin Hill, Nien Tzu Weng, Eryn Tempest and Catherine Lavoie-Marcus.

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She’s Late // A Circus Show ran March 15, 17 & 18 at La Chapelle Theatre.

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Performers + Creators Collectif Double Fantasy

Special guests Lael Stellick + Erin Hill

Costum Designer Marie-Audrey Jacques

Sound Designer Dae Courtney

Light Designer Jon Cleveland

Set Design Étienne Plante

Technical Director Darah Miah

Production Support François Bouvier Michael Martini

Artistic Coach  Sylvie Tourangeau

Supported by Danse-Cité + Conseil des Arts du Canada + Conseil des Arts de Montréal + RURART - art contemporain en milieu rural + CASJB - Centre des arts de la scène Jean-Besré + LA SERRE - arts vivants + Ranch Cheval de Soie + LOL Festival.

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She’s Late // A Circus Show

Double Fantasy

Info | Nien Tzu Weng | Camille Lacelle-Wilsey

Holly Hilts is a Core Member of Also Cool. She is a jeweler, coder & theatre worker currently based in Montreal.

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I do belong here: A Conversation with Flo Fortune

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Flo Fortune by Marie Marchandise

Editor’s note: The following interview and video essay mentions eating disorders and bullying. Reader discretion is advised.

Why do we take pictures of ourselves? Why do we share them? Why do we want to be published? Why do we desire to wear pieces that transform us–armors wrapped around us, there to reassure us–allowing us to become characters injecting freedom into our lives, and granting us the strength to become ourselves? Why do we give life to handmade creations, conceived by spirits whose thoughts only stop at the first clanking sounds of their sewing machines, or when their threads puncture fabric for the first time? Why do we create threads between all of us? Why do we forge ties? Why do we want to meet each other? Why do we create a human and colorful universe? Why do we inspire each other, and feed each other with beautiful visual stories–the ones that smoothly impact you–remaining embedded in your mind? The ones that give you hope, that beckon you, when leafing through glossy pages or watching a fashion show? 

All these questions suddenly find an answer when Flo Fortune opens the doors of this grand dance studio, enveloped between high trees, sun, and silence. Fortune, a professional model, arises quietly and elegantly, such as the echo of their steps on the floor. They are waiting for one thing only: the camera revolving around them; to catch and control it.

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Marie Marchandise for Also Cool Mag: How would you present yourself? How do you think you are seen? How would you love to be remembered?

Flo Fortune: I’m Flo, a 28-year-old queer, midsize model, social media consultant, mental health advocate, writer, and anorexia survivor. 

I think I am seen as a brave person, as I never shy away from stating the mental health issues I’ve dealt with. Being openly vulnerable, on and offline, isn’t easy, but I know for a fact that it can help people feel less lonely in a society that values so-called perfection and success at all costs.

People might also perceive me as a woman because I’m very femme-presenting, which can be difficult to process sometimes.

I want to be remembered as someone who always did what they thought was right and tried their best to achieve what they wanted, even when it seemed impossible.

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Flo Fortune by Marie Marchandise

Also Cool: What is it like to be a model in Paris?

Flo Fortune: No need to sugarcoat it, it’s really hard. Paris is the city of fashion, but in a very traditional way. There is, to this day, very little room for the misfits, fat people, midsize people, people of colour, and disabled people.

For the most part, we simply do not exist, and the ones who made it went through a lot to get there. Diversity isn’t a priority or a goal; it’s mostly a marketing tool. I couldn’t name more than five fat, midsize or nonbinary French models who managed to succeed in France. When it comes to disabled models, it’s like they don’t even exist in the French market. It’s a shame, and I think that the “Parisienne” myth has a lot to do with that.

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Flo Fortune by Marie Marchandise

AC: What defines a “good” model, to you?

FF: Someone who isn’t afraid of not looking pretty, who is ready to play a role, to tell a story. Someone who can use their vulnerability, their story, and their strength to create “the shot.” You have to be okay with the fact that you will give a piece of who you are when on set. Not everything has to be about measurements. Agencies are now, more than ever, looking for personalities, people who have a voice, and things to bring to the table.

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Flo Fortune by Marie Marchandise

AC: How can fashion be more political? What are the first “baby steps” to make the industry more in sync with our era and society?

FF: There are tons of topics that should be discussed and actions to be taken. Sustainability, access to fashion schools, diversity, and ethical work, to name a few. However, none of these issues will ever be truly discussed since most of the industry is still ruled by white, aging, cis male billionaires.

Brands, Maisons, magazines and agencies have to take responsibility and hire people of colour, disabled people, young people, queer people, and fat people, at every level.

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Flo Fortune by Marie Marchandise

AC: Are there any true changes that you’ve spotted?

FF: There are lots of exciting projects that keep me from being pessimistic. For example, I really hope that brands like Marine Serre or Ester Manas, who are getting recognition in France, will inspire others to showcase the same amount of diversity on the runway. Similarly, concerning their sustainable fabric-sourcing, I believe they can influence small designers to consider eco-friendly alternatives and new production processes.

In 2022, I came across many podcasts and Instagram accounts whose goals are to desacralize the fashion industry and share resources. Be it by posting upcycling hacks or addressing issues, such as the colonial dynamics that are still at play within the fashion industry. 

Another thing that comes to my mind is the current debate about nepo babies. We’re finally collectively talking about the fact that most people in fashion don’t come from the working class and that it has to change! 

That being said, I think it’s fair to say that change is being pushed by “small” creators, brands, journalists and so on, and not by those who have the actual power and the means to make a huge positive impact. 

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Flo Fortune by Marie Marchandise

AC: What are you hoping to change in the industry?

FF: Let’s face it, I might be queer and midsize, but I’m still a non-fat white person. I know that I have an easier path than others. That being said, I do think that working in this industry, being who I am, knowing where I come from and how narrow-minded the modeling industry is, is already a push in the right direction. Being "a face and a body" isn’t enough. I want to use my voice and work on projects that mean something as much as I can. Be it by working with sustainable, QTBIPOC-led brands, queer photographers, or truly inclusive agencies.

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Flo Fortune by Marie Marchandise

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I do belong here credits

Model: @manicpixiefuckk
MUA: @paulinemakeupro
Hair: @lapetitevictoulouse
Dress: @noemiedevime.paris
Lingerie: @eternel_ephemere_underwear
Nails: @nailedbyines
Jewels: @labricotbleu, @annashelley.fr, @jeannette.atelier, @cecile.dallaglio_jewellery, @maaadboutique
Location: @residencedesartstoulouse  

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Marie Marchandise

Marie Marchandise is a 28-year-old photographer, art director, and PR specialist living in Toulouse, France. When she was a child, she wanted to be a poet. Growing up, she was obsessed with the fact that she actually wanted to be helpful: she wanted to be a vet, a psychologist, or a lawyer. With arts and PR, she combines the inherent desire of her first dream job as a child, and her inner need developed from her teenage years into adulthood.  When she tells visual and written stories with brands, designers, models, and creatives, she contributes to a bigger picture. If you feel something when looking at her photographs or reading her texts, it means that her job is done. If you are inspired, motivated, looking for something new thanks to them, this is more than she could ever dream of. 

Instagram

Flo Fortune 

Fashion is, for me, a tool to get my own emancipation. A way to explore. A means to reach self-definition on its own. Fabrics and textiles represent artistic expressions, helping me to exist. As a child, fashion allowed me to be alive when the rest of the world wanted me to disappear. Today, when I’m wearing clothes, I am always diving somewhere else, into a new universe. Every time. Every day. My individuality is asserted thanks to fashion. I want to be loud. I am clear: I belong here. I am doing this job as I am craving poetry and creativity. I am eagerly looking for different ways and options to communicate and create a sustainable and healthy bond with persons who are not only like me, but inspire me. I want to give back that inspiration, I want to breathe in and breathe out in studios, catwalks, and magazines. I am doing this for the past versions of myself that thought too many times that I needed to suffer and starve myself to create beautiful pictures. I am doing this job to prove that you can fall many times, yet always pick yourself up, stand up, and rise up.

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Proje(c)t; Les Bonnes - Language & power dynamics through an adaptation of Jean Genet's 'The Maids'

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Image by Phanie Ethier

This weekend, we’re especially excited to catch the play Proje(c)t; Les Bonnes, running at Centaur Theatre’s Wildside Festival from January 26th-29th. 

Proje(c)t; Les Bonnes is an adaptation of Jean Genet’s The Maids, presented in a format crossing time and language and praised for its “diabolical weirdness”. The play is performed in French, English, and Spanish, with English subtitles provided.

Roxane Loumède, the play’s director and adaptor, describes the show as, “strange, sexy and excitingly terrifying. It can make you uncomfortable, but that’s the point.”

The play revolves around two women, Solange and Claire, who work for a wealthy Westmount woman referred to as Madame. While she is out, they spend their evenings enacting different plots to murder Madame, until this ritual backfires. Loumède jokingly notes, “you’ll have to come and see the show to find out what happens next.”

Last week, we had the lovely opportunity to meet Loumède and discuss how this play came to be, and what incited the different elements of her adaptation, like language politics, power dynamics, and wealth.

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On bilingualism in theatre practice 

Roxane Loumède: It all started when I finished at Concordia in 2015. I graduated from an English school, but I was a Francophone. I was not really in the English or French communities, just in a weird in-between, so I wanted to start creating my own work.

I decided to start workshopping and thinking about bilingual theatre, where using French and English would serve the narrative and the dramaturgy of the piece. That way, I could bridge the gap and hire people that I wanted to work with from both the English and French communities. 

I worked on Jean Genet’s The Maids at Concordia as a performer. I thought about what it means to bring a piece from the 1940s to the stage, and how to do so, whether or not the play is outdated. It’s a story that talks about how these two maids are serving this really wealthy woman. When it was written in the 1940s, Montreal was in a place where the Anglophones had more money than Francophones. So I thought, if I put this in the original time period, then the Madame would be an Anglophone, and the two maids would be Francophones. 

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Image by Phanie Ethier

On starting the process and adapting the text

RL: When I got some money and a team together in 2018, I started workshopping the piece and rewriting the text in French and English, and also rewriting from French from France to French from Quebec, which is different. I used more of an older “Canadian English” for the Madame.

I asked myself, “Today in Montreal, who is more wealthy, who still has maids working for them?” And it’s not the same as in the 1940s. Now, Francophone people in Montreal have as much wealth as Anglophones. If you go into affluent homes in Outremont, or Westmount, you will find Francophone homeowners with South American domestic workers. So, thinking about that—and talking about it with the crew—I added a third language, Spanish, to the piece. This allows the play to reflect the reality of today. 

One of the cast members, Camila, who has been with the project since the beginning, speaks Spanish fluently. So, it was with her that we started thinking about the idea that her character would switch from French to Spanish. We aimed to show a shift in history by indicating who is dominating, and who works for who and examining the power dynamics… While also shedding light on how the circumstances of the women working in these homes haven’t changed much since the 1940s.

In this way, the piece by Jean Genet is still really relevant today because the issues are still present—not just in Montreal. Boundaries are more or less broken most of the time because you develop a close relationship with the person you are working for, and vice versa.

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Image by Phanie Ethier

On learning through Proje(c)t; les Bonnes development

RL: The Les Bonnes of 2018 and the one I’m presenting in now in 2023 is a big representation of the artist I have become. It’s really nice to work with artists who are willing to try your nonsense ideas and let you fail at them… When you say, “Sorry that was not the right choice!” they’re flexible. Being able to learn what works and doesn’t work with a team you trust makes you a better director, in my opinion.

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Image by Phanie Ethier

On the viewing experience

RL: I’ve built this show so that you can understand what is going on without having to grasp all the multilingual dialog perfectly. We’ve worked a lot with movement, sound and lighting so all of your senses are very much activated. This helps bring the actors’ stage business and onstage dynamics to the forefront, highlighting the characters’ struggles. 

If you’re not fully immersed in the words, you will still have a pleasant experience and get something from it. If you don’t want to spend the whole show reading the English subtitles, you can let yourself go and be fully in the action and get swept away.

Loumède’s other piece Ensaf attend was presented as a reading last summer as part of Jamais lu Festival. She has more projects in the works and you can watch this space to stay tuned!

image by Phanie Ethier

Proje(c)t; Les Bonnes runs from tomorrow, January 26th, until Sunday, January 29th at Centaur Theatre.

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Adaptation and Direction: Roxane Loumède

Performers: Marie-Ève Bérubé, Camila Forteza, Alexandra Petrachuck

Assistant Dramaturg: Geneviève Gagné

Costumes: Sophie El-Assaad

Set & Props: Bruno-Pierre Houle

Lights: Catherine Fournier-Poirier

Sound Design: Joseph Browne

Video & Technical Director: Vladimir Alexandru Cara

Assistant Director & Stage Manager: Trevor Barrette

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Proje(c)t; Les Bonnes

3e Espace Théâtre

Tickets | Info | Troisième espace théâtre

Holly Hilts is a Core Member of Also Cool. She is a jeweller, coder & theatre worker currently based in Montreal.

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HOY: Creating Space for Latin American Diasporas and Creative Communities in the Mile End (Montreal)

Vanessa Maya in front of HOY

Situated in the heart of the Mile End at 5171 St-Laurent, HOY provides a well-needed dose of familiarity and representation for Latin American diasporas and creative communities in Montreal. In their own words:

"HOY es un espacio multifuncional dedicado al arte, al diseño y a la comunidad. Somos un espacio en el que se puede crear, aprender, compartir, intercambiar ideas y proyectos, asistir a una conferencia o formar parte de una plática ― en inglés, francés o español." 

Launched in early April, HOY was created to be a design and contemporary art hybrid project focused on catering to local artists. It is run by Vanessa Maya (Mexican artist and community builder), Laurence Boire (designer and project manager), and Etienne Murphy (graphic designer and art coordinator), and has had a total of nine shows this year. 

Vanessa with her ceramic work

Vanessa grew up in Mexico and lived in Montreal briefly during her teen years, only returning to live here full-time years later. She has been practicing pottery for over seven years, working primarily with hand-built pieces. Her work is recognizably organic, taking on simple and twisting shapes that are made to be integrated into your everyday life. From wine coolers to sculptures, there is a placid beauty in every aspect of her work.

Work by & photo provided by Vanessa Maya

Although pottery is her primary medium, she has recently branched out to create a community space (HOY) that hosts everything from gallery openings to workshops, trying to focusing on the Latin American diasporas and other communities that are often under- or mis-represented in Canada. She is also interested in profiling artists who’ve never had the chance to exhibit before, alongside artists who have had exhibits in other spaces. “The idea is to put ‘everybody under the same roof’—as we say in Mexico, ‘todos bajo el mismo techo’—because we all need to be able to have the opportunity to show our work,” she explains.

Work by Vanessa Maya

Vanessa is self-taught, and deeply inspired by her time spent with various artists in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Morelos, Mexico. After learning everything from how they collect the clay from the mountains to how traditional aesthetics are integrated or evolved by younger creatives, these experiences have solidified her deep appreciation for the craft. However, as she got older, she saw how tourists with "good intentions" have often exploited Mexican artists for profit in Canada and the Mile End.

More often than not, a tourist with "good intentions" will sell "artisanal" Mexican goods in a high-end boutique in Canada or the United States after paying the artist very little for their work. There will be some sort of "feel-good" story about "helping" the Mexican community or artist who created the work, but ultimately all of the praise and clout goes to the tourist who imported the work and the boutique that sold it. 

At a time when more and more foreigners continue to colonize Mexico by hiking up rent prices with their "work from home situations," HOY aims to put Latin American voices first, with no white middleman and no fetishization of culture. It's a safe space for underrepresented communities to come together to tell their stories—to be artists in their own right—and also for any other artists. 

HOY via Vanessa Maya

One of the shows that Vanessa curated, "TIANGUIS DE CERÁMICA", showcased various ceramic artists in a format similar to artist markets in Mexico. The "tianguis" is a pop-up, a public and informal gathering of local vendors selling everything from groceries, electronics, and clothing, to crafts and prepared foods. It originated in Mexico, but can now be found all over South America. In this spirit, the team behind HOY presented its take on the market with a collection of unique pieces crafted by local ceramic artists.

HOY via Vanessa Maya

Vanessa also co-curated “YA LLEGAMOS” along with Diane García. “YA LLEGAMOS” continues the celebration of identity, heritage, and connection that unites Latin American peoples as interpreted by a select few artists, designers, and craftspeople. It explores the effects of generational migration and experiences that have shaped communities — ultimately forging stories that inform contemporary Latin American artistic practices. 

This exhibition seeks to chronicle the works being produced by artists working in diverse mediums, underlining the historical purpose of communicating shared experiences, and the mindful continuation of cultural representation.

HOY via Vanessa Maya

HOY is "open sometimes," Vanessa notes, which is a cheeky nod to the wonderful Mexican culture that the space so beautifully embodies. Visit when you can, as the space is only open until December of 2022, and you'll be sure to find some new friends and good art.

Vanessa plans on continuing HOY in the future, and in the meantime will be sharing pieces from Mexican artists with her Pichancha project, as well as sharing them via her casapichancha account.

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HOY

Instagram

Vanessa Maya

Instagram (@vanessamayagutter) | Website (mayagu.work) | Instagram (@casapichancha)

Malaika Astorga is the Co-Founder & Creative Director of Also Cool. She is a Mexican-Canadian visual artist, writer, and social media strategist currently based in Montreal.

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La Luna Naranja: Exploring the Collaboration of Amalia Naranjo, Luna Nashar, and Oriana Confente

Amalia Naranjo modelling the La Luna Naranja collection. Photo courtesy of Oriana Confente

“Every night, I am alone. I transform into

different shapes

Every 28 days.”

As seasons begin to change, I have found myself getting further swept up by pensiveness under the night sky. The evenings draw longer, leaving a collection of charcoal clouds and twinkling stars which further illustrate the vastness that surrounds us and the bittersweet reality that everything must shift. Who are we in relation to each other, to our environment, and to past versions of ourselves?

The latest creative collaboration between Montreal-based artists Luna Nashar, Amalia Naranjo and Oriana Confente contends with such questions, linking tote-bag aficionados across the universe with a transcendent connection. La Luna Naranja was released earlier this summer; its canvas was carefully designed by Naranjo and Nashar, and captured by Confente with a warm and decadent editorial photoshoot. On La Luna Naranja, the trio shares:

“La Luna Naranja offers a unique fragment of what forms a Bigger image. In this fast-paced life, we go through ours with a small perspective of what's happening around us, letting our surroundings affect how we grow and reshape into our new self. The uniqueness of a Luna Naranja bag represents the beauty of individuality while still being a part of a more complex whole. A 1x1 metre canvas, hand painted by Amalia Naranjo. Each tote bag, unique, is a part of a greater picture. United, they create the original piece. However, the canvas was never meant to keep its beauty for itself. Cut, folded and sewn, it shares its true purpose: unity through art.”

The project alluringly melds temporality with an everlasting vibrance – what began as one has been reborn as many, and the many have been immortalized as one. Although the fragments of La Luna Naranja have each found their forever homes, their bond—much like ours with the past, present, and future—remains fused throughout the phases of the night sky. Also Cool Mag recently connected with Naranjo, Nashar, and Confente to discuss their creative bonds and their visions for La Luna Naranja.

Amalia Naranjo modelling the La Luna Naranja collection. Photo courtesy of Oriana Confente

Rebecca L. Judd for Also Cool Mag: Thank you all for sharing your creativity with Also Cool! To start, I would love to know a bit more about each of you and your respective practices. Can you elaborate on how this collaboration came about? How did you folks cross paths, and which artistic values or interests have you bonded over?

Luna Nashar: Amalia and I met on set of my first editorial in 2020, and I met Oriana at my very first art exhibition a year later! Since then, we have created opportunities for ourselves to connect and grow together as creatives. 

I am inspired by Amalia’s unapologetic approach to her art. She is a multidisciplinary artist, and [through this project] I really wanted to challenge her and get to know her as a painter. 

Oriana is a perfect fit on the project. Her use of film photography reinforces the “one-of-a-kind” theme of the project. I also love discussing sustainability in fashion with Oriana – we both are big on thrifting! It was interesting to have her on this project where a new art piece is recycled into a tote.

Oriana Confente: I actually met Amalia on the same night I met Luna at her exhibition last year. That was the first time I had seen Luna’s textiles and Amalia’s paintings. 

It’s funny how sometimes you encounter people and you just click. Like Luna mentioned, we connected over sustainability in fashion and I admire her approach to design. I love that Luna often repurposes deadstock fabrics, and I’m obsessed with her interpretations of the female form. I mean… pussy pockets. What a concept! I have at least three at home, and I’m sure that I’ll own more soon. 

I fully agree with Luna – I’m also inspired by Amalia’s unapologetic approach to her work. Getting to know her more through the events and projects that Luna organized has been lovely. It was especially fun to have an opportunity for Amalia to model with pieces she co-created. Funnily enough, this shoot was supposed to just be for e-commerce at first, but it evolved into so much more. I am thankful for transformation!

Amalia Naranjo: Like Luna said, we met in September 2020 for her editorial photoshoot. A year after that, I met Oriana at Luna’s art exhibition The Red Room. Their energy always felt so pure and real to me, when Luna proposed to me to collaborate with her on a tote bag project where I would get to paint, I was really excited to jump in. 

I immediately bonded with Luna. I loved her style, her creativity and her aesthetics, but mostly her perspective on arts and community values. She has the gift of bringing interesting creative people together so we can share and collaborate on our creations. Oriana’s artistic approach on themes like nature and technology and how they can co-exist really captured my attention. I admire the complexity of her projects and how she talks about it in an effortless manner.

Also Cool: La Luna Naranja fuses individual pieces into a greater narrative about transformation, reflecting on interconnectedness between eras and experiences. Tell us more about how this is thematically reflected in the collection, and what you’ve learned in creating it.

Luna: I feel like a bond of sisterhood developed throughout the project, as we learned from each other and spent time with each other's art. It was fruitful to share and be part of different challenges when it comes to our different mediums. As I sewed the totes, I could tell where Amalia put more paint! It was really fun to imagine her creative process as I was transforming her art.

Also, it was lovely seeing people choose which tote would be theirs. It reflects their uniqueness. I feel like La Luna Naranja created a small community where each one-of-a-kind tote is carried by an exceptional soul who shares a love for the art piece. The sisterhood that we shared together is for the community.

Amalia: When I had to come up with a design, I knew I wanted to bring a sense of uniqueness to every individual bag, so I knew that it wouldn’t be a single pattern throughout the whole fabric. But I also wanted it to be all connected and dynamic to represent movement and change through time and space – hence the lines that travel through the whole piece. There are also the different shapes of what seem to be naturally-rounded balls, but whose shapes change depending on their surroundings – just like us. Humans are affected by our surroundings, and we change as we move through time and space.

Amalia Naranjo modelling the La Luna Naranja collection. Photo courtesy of Oriana Confente

AC: I’m interested in the prospect of “unity through art”; how the repurposing of this piece into tote bags helped it to achieve a higher level — “its true purpose”. As artists, was there a moment when you felt that this was achieved?

Luna: Great art is life-changing. Traditionally, a painting is appreciated in a specific space. Repurposing it into a timeless piece elongates its narrative. I love the idea that you get to spend time with a piece that makes you feel a certain way. 

Transforming Amalia’s art was a very big moment for me – especially the first cut! I feel like a bond of sisterhood developed throughout that process of transformation. Although, the greatest feeling is knowing those tote bags are part of someone else’s life now. Maybe we should do a reunion with all the La Luna Naranja carriers!

Amalia: I could not say it better, Luna! By giving the art piece a utility, its purpose definitely adds more to the symbolism of moving through time and space with the user, and the sense of unity with all the people involved in this creation and the consumer is defined. I feel like this project keeps reaching higher levels. From doing a playful photoshoot, wearing the big painted fabric, to wearing the individual tote bags while doing more of a conceptual photoshoot. I feel it even more when I see people using it in their everyday lifestyle, and finally, when I see it published in a magazine for all eyes to see!

Amalia Naranjo modelling the La Luna Naranja collection. Photo courtesy of Oriana Confente

AC: I’d love to hear more about the intentions with colour in the piece, both as totes and in this photoshoot. 

Luna: Each emotion that each colour communicates, I want to feel and experience. I wear what I feel, and I am very comfortable expressing those feelings. I like finding balance in those emotions and I believe Oriana did a great job capturing that!

Oriana: Luna and Amalia are both incredibly vibrant human beings, in terms of the work they create but also in terms of who they are. Capturing their essence in this editorial was important to all of us. 

Amalia came to the set with electric blue eyeliner, and Luna had the spontaneous idea to throw some yellow lace she had in the studio over the backdrop… It came together quite naturally. 

Amalia: I cherry-picked the colours to create a vibrant palette of a nice variety, one that represented a diverse range of feelings and states. I also had fun blending various colours inside the balls, which was again to represent free movement and transformation. I chose to paint the lines black so that they could be neutral while the balls do all the eye-catching with their bright changing colors. When it came to the photoshoot, we approached colour in the same way: we went extra on the colour palette with the electric blue eye makeup, the extravagant red backdrop and the bright yellow lace. 

AC: Thank you all for your time! To close things off, what are each of you up to next, creatively? Are there any future collaborations in the works?

Luna: I am currently working on a new collection of bags in collaboration with a vintage store in Montreal, where transformation is also a major theme. Truly, collaborations are essential to every artist's growth. 

Oriana: Luna and I are starting a new project together! My practice, through photography and other creative means, is interested in disrupting consumerism and repurposing materials. I work with electronic waste (e-waste) a lot. Right now, Luna and I are co-designing garments that incorporate e-waste we’re collecting from friends and family. 

I’ve created e-waste accessories before—like earrings made from microchips—so it’s exciting to be working with a skilled designer like Luna to make more elaborate wearables. Plus, sharing talents and merging practices continues to commit us to transformation and unity through art. Collaboration and making-with is crucial for any type of community. I’m grateful I can experience that artistically with really cool folks. 

Amalia: I am very proud to say that as La Luna Naranja sold out very quickly, I am currently working on a new collection of painted tote bags with Luna. I am also working on a collection of paintings to have my own art exhibit soon. I am looking forward to more collabs with more creatives as I believe we can only do so much more amazing stuff when we work together.

Medusa, a “pussy pocket” bag produced by Luna Nashar. Photo courtesy of Luna Nashar

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La Luna Naranja

Modelled by Amalia Naranjo

Photographed by Oriana Confente

Garments produced by Luna Nashar

Tote bags designed by Luna Nashar and Amalia Naranjo

Hair styled by FirstClass Hair

Make-up by Dorianys Naranjo

Assisted by Vladim Vilain

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Luna Nashar

Website | Instagram

Oriana Confente

Website | Instagram | Twitter

Amalia Naranjo

Instagram

Rebecca L. Judd is the features editor of Also Cool Mag. She writes and creates out of her studio apartment in Ottawa, kept company by vivid dreams and a cuddly grey kitty named Dora.

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Artist Spotlight: Jen O'Connor (Part II)

Jen O’Connor. Photo courtesy of CJ Sommerfeld

In our first chat with Vancouver-based artist Jen O’Connor, she dove into the series of events which initiated her purpose to integrate consumer waste into creative works. It all started with a rejection of what she’d been taught was the first step to making art: purchasing materials. After beginning to source items that were simply around, she was propelled into garbage sculpture and subsequently constructed a public stage where she hosted a TV show-formatted performance titled Trash Talk. 

Following her sculpture and TV show endeavours, O’Connor’s divergent uses for what society refers to as ‘single-use items’ and other discarded materials have evolved into a painting practice where she merges garbage with oil paints on canvas. In part-two of our conversation with O’Connor, she further elucidates on the confluence between her garbage works and consumer culture, as well as why she documents many of her pieces via film. 

AC: Your artist statement acknowledges that society's discarded materials—which you integrate into your works—hold embedded narratives of our consumer culture. Can you elaborate on the stories that pertain to the waste, and the greater narrative that comes together once waste materials are transformed on canvas?

JO: The narratives of consumer culture are embedded in a way that we do not notice them anymore. The most banal object, such as a can, is so commonplace that we take for granted the necessity of cans when there could be alternatives to single-use objects. 

Through the process of smelting the can, its own narrative is betrayed by revealing that it is not made of solely aluminium but also a composite of plastic. The paintings may appear as an optimistic solution for the issue of waste, but this is not the reading I intend to illustrate. I want to depict, rather, the great deal of effort that must be made to reintegrate something as simple as a few pieces of refundable waste, and give them the dignified status as “diverted permanently from the landfill”.  These paintings should raise the problem of reintegration of waste. 

Even in my video work, the detritus does not become a new entity on its own. It simply gets documented through its narrative journey to the landfill. My work aims for proportional representation of waste in the gallery, of which I have barely scratched the surface.  

Jen O’Connor. Photo courtesy of CJ Sommerfeld

AC: Upon completion, you archive many of your works that are too big to store using video documentation. How did you formulate the idea to preserve your larger pieces using this approach?

JO: When I decided to produce works using garbage, I had to abandon my painting practice. Since there was so much material available, I rapidly began to work on a larger scale. These objects were not commodifiable, nor could they be stored easily, so the only hope for them to exist as artworks was through an ephemeral assemblage. In an effort to preserve my work, I chose to document.  

AC: Can you give us some examples of works which you documented via film?

The first body of work that I made entirely out of garbage was called “The Apartment”. It was a replica of my bachelor apartment made entirely out of garbage. After completing this work, I realised that I could also use both my body and others’ as free materials through performance; I then decided to build a theatre in the parking lot made entirely out of waste. This was named the Garbage Conglomerate Theatre and became the stage of Trash Talk.

Following my work through the GCT and my post-graduation art practice has veered towards film and video where I do not make the usage of garbage explicit. Instead I produce short films with a collaborative group named Sacred Projections; we have no funding which leads us to make use of free, found, scavenged and borrowed materials.

AC: What’s next on the horizon for your upcoming works?  

JO: I like to paint, draw, and illustrate tattoos when I am working solo, but I am invested in creative collaborative work at the moment. I believe that collaboration is just as important, and that it can be quite a difficult skill to have people working together towards a goal or a dream. Given the polarized directions in which our society is being pulled, I think that the community working together is of paramount importance, so I’ve been channelling my energy into producing Sacred Projections.

Sacred Projections is an open call to artists where we come together to produce short films on a monthly basis. Any type of collaboration can be difficult, so working together creatively gives us some room for abstraction. We work together to solve problems without the situation needing to be overly stressful. We are all participating because we want to, and everyone brings something to the table.I want to continue creating in this way for the time being. 

Aside from that project, I am still smelting cans and receiving interesting results in doing so. As I continue to smelt, I am collecting these materials for a future series of paintings. I also have a series of painted works in progress, entitled “22”; this series draws upon archetypes, alchemy, astrology, psychology and human behaviour. It will illustrate narratives that are reoccurring in the sphere of human activity. 

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Jen O’Connor

Website | Sacred Projections YouTube | Garbage Conglomerate YouTube

CJ Sommerfeld (she/her) is a Vancouver-based freelance writer with a particular interest in the convergence of language, art and society. When she is not writing, you can find her experimenting with harmonic minor progressions on her keyboard.

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Artist Spotlight: Jen O'Connor (Part I)

Jen O’Connor. Photo courtesy of CJ Sommerfeld

Jen O’Connor loves garbage. Confronting it as something other than society’s discarded materials, she merges this sourced waste with oil paints to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Once coalesced on canvas, her foraged pieces are preserved and a new narrative around their existence is constructed. In questioning the perceived lack of utility that surrounds garbage, O’Connor rejects consumerist culture and its intersection with creation, and instead finds use in these rejected objects. 

After graduating with a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2020, O’Connor continues to create out of her space in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Anticipate a constellation’s worth of beer cans, debris and other seemingly prosaic items metamorphosed into plausible art-making materials in O’Connor’s works. Don’t expect blatant trash attached to canvas, but instead waste transfigured. By exposing her scavenged cans to high temperatures—a process known as smelting—the cans anodize, extinguishing their silvery colour and transforming to one that’s golden and, at times, iridescent.

Also Cool recently sat down with O’Connor to jump inside her world of beer cans and oil paints. In this first-half of our conversation, we dove into her critiques of consumption in the art world, her TV show titled Trash Talk, and sourcing debris from an off-grid island for one of her most recent works — “Smelt Series”.

The Smelt Series, created on Lasqueti Island B.C. Photo courtesy of CJ Sommerfeld

CJ Sommerfeld for Also Cool: Hey Jen, thanks for taking the time to chat with Also Cool! To get things started: you very cleverly integrate waste into your painting works, how did this practice first come about?  

Jen O’Connor: While completing my BFA at Emily Carr, I had some profound realizations about the necessity of consuming products for the making of art. I rejected shopping as the basis for art-making, resolving instead to produce works while buying nothing. This led me away from painting and towards garbage sculpture. I scavenged, found, and borrowed materials, all while also using bodies (mine and others’) through performance. I wanted to know how much I could create without consuming.

This led me to construct an entire theatre in the Easy Park parking lot adjacent to Emily Carr. I then hosted a performance entitled Trash Talk, which was a TV show-formatted performance about waste. I was the host,  and would ask participants to join me onstage to discuss issues related to waste. This became an incubator of ideas for sustainable practices; a forum where ideas, jokes and even a think tank emerged in response to the changes that we wanted to see. This series is available to see on my Garbage Conglomerate YouTube channel. 

Since this work, I have developed two parallel practices. I’ve resumed my painting practice, and have most recently produced a body of work called “The Smelt Series”. This is an effort to combine post-consumer materials with the traditional materials of art-making, such as paint and canvas. I have also continued my work with video, where I document and animate sculptures and sets through reusing, borrowing materials while incorporating collaborators to create moving paintings. 

Also Cool: Your painting practice is self-described as an "analogy to alchemy", one that seeks to derive its redemptive substance from “base matter”. Can you further demystify your work's comparison to medieval chemistry?  To clarify for our readers, can you elaborate on the term base matter with regards to your works?  

Jen: Alchemists thought that at the root of all matter was the supreme substance of gold, and if they could refine them enough, they could transmute all metals into gold. Each alchemist would have a different definition of what would be considered “base matter”, depending on their practice. Some considered ocean water to be “base matter” because it is the largest ratio of substance on earth. Other alchemists would refer to a “base matter” simply as the material they worked with the most.  Personally, I consider my base matter to be garbage or waste — anything that can be acquired for free. When I work with my materials, I seek to transform unwanted garbage into art that has value.  

As we know, iron cannot become gold except for perhaps in a particle accelerator. Many other alchemists encountered the difficulty of what it was they had set out to do, and began their work instead on the metaphysical level. If one could tune into the creativity of God and the universe, this transformation could happen at the level of spiritual realization, and it would give them control over all matter. 

I also work with the spiritual element of creation in my work by developing my intuition. When working with my materials, I leave a lot of room for the matter to express itself through the processes. I like to think that my process is reflected in the work, and hope that viewers  see my paintings as matter expressing itself.

AC: What are some examples of waste materials that we can see in your works? Where do you typically source them? 

JO: My definition of waste is broad. I would argue that materials used in the pursuit of reaching certain standards in painting, for example, also create a lot of waste. During my time as a painter, I created dozens of paintings that weren’t any good; they later became building materials for the awning on my Garbage Conglomerate Theatre.  

Emily Carr was an excellent place to source materials, and their dumpster became a horn of plenty to an artist like me. However, with increasing bureaucracy and legislation, these free rides became  short-lived. ECUAD has since made a great effort to contain their waste under lock and key, so I am no longer able to access it.  

Since graduation, I’ve resumed painting practice. Today, my work blends traditional materials such as canvas and paint with what one might consider “waste”. My favourite material to use is beer cans, since they are light and they can be affixed to either canvas or panel. Not only do I use beer cans, I prefer to have them undergo a process of smelting to allow them to reveal their more interesting properties and express themselves as matter before they are incorporated. The smelting process is where I expose the cans to flames and high temperatures, so that they begin to melt and anodize. Since aluminium has such a low melting point, the cans are promptly removed and often have interesting effects. Oftentimes, the anodizing causes the cans to take on golden properties that are reminiscent of alchemy.  

I also source a lot of debris from an off-grid island where I like to spend a lot of my time. It is difficult to dispose of waste in this environment, so there are a lot of materials for me to use. I curate the most interesting pieces and what would be easily incorporated into my painting practice and find a lot of visually interesting waste to use. 

Check back in to read part 2 of our conversation with Jen O’Connor!

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Jen O’Connor

Website | Sacred Projections YouTube | Garbage Conglomerate YouTube

CJ Sommerfeld (she/her) is a Vancouver-based freelance writer with a particular interest in the convergence of language, art and society. When she is not writing, you can find her experimenting with harmonic minor progressions on her keyboard.

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Dance Spotlight: BLEU NÉON

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Kim-Sanh Châu is mesmerizing in her piece, BLEU NÉON. Between dance, movement and Vietnamese rap is a journey to the rediscovery of an imaginary homeland.

In a short series of sold-out relaxed performances* at Montreal, arts interculturels (MAI), Châu moves methodically through variations of squatting, glowing in a magnificent, multicoloured haze of neon light, designed by Jon Cleveland. The room is set up in thrust (audience on three sides), with chairs and cushions on the ground. Cables are loosely hanging around the back wall, coiled along the edges with neon lights piled on all sides.

Photo by Kinga Michalska

As we waited for the performance to start, we read translation booklets for the performance’s texts in in Vietnamese, English, and French. There were colouring pages, snacks and prior to the performance, we were told exactly how the show would unfold and that our seating could be adjusted without a problem if we were not comfortable.

With Châu , we discussed how nostalgia acted as a coping mechanism for Vietnamese refugees in the 80s; helping them to imagine a world and home that no longer existed for them. The Vietnam that Châu knows well is so vibrant, bustling, and youthful. This performance integrated the music and movement of these different eras, these varying nostalgias, the loss of language, and difficulties surrounding sexual objectification along the way.

Though Châu does not speak Vietnamese, she learned each rap for this performance phonetically. In the talk-back after the show, she explained how Toronto rapper JONAIR wrote the pieces in Vietnamese, elaborating on the distance children of diasporas have from their cultures.

Châu’s collaborator Chi, of Hazy Montagne Mystique / Chittakone Baccam, grew up in Laos, right next to Vietnam and was able to access these points of nostalgia through his grandparents’ audio tapes. Together, Châu and Chi create a dreamy and dark soundscape of ambient music, modern rap beats and cassette tapes from another time.

Photo by Kinga Michalska

Creator and performer Kim-Sanh Châu is a Montreal-based Vietnamese-French contemporary dance artist. She has lived in Montreal for over 15 years and has a parallel life in Vietnam, with a dance studio, community, lovers and mentors. Her practice comprises choreographic installation and video-making. Châu is interested in the emergence of imaginary landscapes through the body, distilled from far away dreams, imaginary memories and psychotropic reminiscences.

It was an absolute pleasure to watch this performance in a tiny space. With an audience all around, facing each other, we took a dive into her magical world.

This show will be back in Montreal for Vietnamese Culture Week in September and will also be performed in Vietnam later this year.

The BLEU NÉON soundtrack is provided by Montreal's Hazy Montagne Mystique / Chittakone Baccam (composition), JONAIR, Duy Quang Vu (paroles rap), and Vietnamese experimental trio Rắn Cạp Đuôi Collective

*All BLEU NÉON performances have a more relaxed attitude to noise and movement within the theatre. The reception, soundscape and visual atmosphere are adapted to create a calm and inclusive environment for all.

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Theatre Spotlight: Black Theatre Workshop's "Pipeline" Design Team

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Black Theatre Workshop is making big moves — their bilingual production of Pipeline, co-produced with La Manufacture, has swung us right back into gear with this emotional, challenging piece and beautiful, bold creative choices.

The play follows Nya, a single mother who teaches in a public school and her teenage son Omari, who attends a private institution. As Omari struggles with the everyday factors working against him in the school system, an incident occurs that puts his future, and the education his mother worked so hard for him to have access to, at risk.

Pipeline’s stellar design team deserves to have a light shone upon them while audiences still have a chance to catch the French version of the production from April 26th to May 8th at Théâtre La Licorne.

On set and costumes, Nalo Soyini Bruce thought a lot about the uniforms we wear everyday: in school, for work and as members of society. A theme throughout Nalo’s work is her non-traditional mix of pieces to create asymmetry in her characters. In Pipeline, the architecture and shapes throughout costume and set created the perfect industrial, chilling rigidity that characters manipulated with their frustrations.

It is important to highlight Nalo’s stellar team of Black women supporting her design: Courtney Moses (Set & Costume Assistant), Mlle Geri (Make-Up Assistant), & Enyse Charles (Costume Assistant). Nalo has expressed that their work was instrumental to the process and collaborating exclusively with a team of Black women in costume, makeup and sets was a first for her. She feels it is important for youth to see this example and be inspired to enter creative fields as performing artists as well as designers.

Elena Stoodley, Sound Designer, felt personally connected to the story of Pipeline, having grown up in the Quebec school system. “Like Omari, I was sometimes targeted and with no other ways to protect myself, I used to result to my fists to stop the verbal bullying,” she says. She even wrote a piece about her constant fear of ending up in prison because the school system at an early age made her feel like she needed to be contained.

In creating the production’s sound design, Elena thought about how prison systems are mirrored in other institutions and “how weirdly, a prison soundscape resembles high school hallways. The cafeteria, the intercom, the bus that gets you to class or your cell, how time is counted...” She mentions the threat of being just a number is latent, a theme echoed in the video and costume designs, as well.

Lighting Designer Tim Rodrigues, a staple of the Montreal theatre community, knew he would be working on this production as of 2019. Rodrigues was drawn to the emotional layers in the script, as well as the importance of the issue at the centre of the story: the school-to-prison pipeline.

Starting with identifying moments where light or quality of light is mentioned in the script, Tim also follows and elevates the emotional journeys of the characters with lighting. He looks into different cultural references mentioned in the script (poetry, music, etc.) and carries his impressions of the story and the world into design meetings and conversations with the creative team and directors. Tim’s lighting for Pipeline created a moody, chilling colour palette that elevated the intensity and depth of the content presented.

Video design team Andrew & Emily, of potatoCakes_digital, were also enthused to be a part of this production and developed their design virtually using Unreal Engine and a draft of Nalo’s design to pre-visualize their mapping. The video design mapped throughout the show onto the actors and stage, providing context, shape, and texture; elevating the emotional peaks of the performance.

To find out more, go check out the show at La Licorne from April 26th to May 8th! Tickets are available here.

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Artist Spotlight: Nora Kelly

Nora Kelly Band press photo via Nora Kelly

If anything, Nora Kelly is multi-faceted. She's done everything from painting murals in Mexico City to creating editorial work for the NY Times, not to mention playing rock shows in Montreal as Nora Kelly Band and Dish Pit.

We spoke to Nora about her creative practice, advice for other artists, and more.

via Nora Kelly

Malaika Astorga for Also Cool: How did you first get into visual arts? 

Nora Kelly: I was a reclusive teenager, and drawing was something I had control over, could pick up and put down whenever I wanted. I think my continued dedication to art is for similar reasons. I need a lot of alone time, and paintings and drawing are great ways to spend one's time.

Also Cool: Have you always practiced with the same mediums, or has that changed over the years?

Nora: First, I was into drawing. I didn't start painting until I was in university. I was probably the worst painter in my class when I started at Concordia. Now I can't get enough of it. 

via Nora Kelly

AC: When did you first start doing murals? What was your experience with the creative scene in Mexico City?

NK: I had always dreamed of being a muralist, but it's kind of a catch-22 getting your foot in the door. No one wants you to paint their wall if you have never done it before, but without any murals to show on your resume, you aren't going to get that first wall. 

When I moved to Mexico City in 2017 and a mural company called Street Art Chilango hired me, I was so excited. At first, I was handing spray paint cans to more experienced artists, but eventually, they gave me my first wall. They are a very prestigious company, working with clients like Vans and Ray-Ban, but after 6 months, I quit because I had always been into the democratic quality of street art. I like that it's accessible to anyone walking by, and I didn't want to be involved in painting glorified ads for large corporations. I went door to door, asking smaller businesses in Mexico City if they wanted a mural and have gotten all my work that way since, even in Canada. 

AC: Do you have any advice for anyone looking to do more professional / commissioned work as a visual artist but doesn't know where to start?

NK: I'm kind of type-A, but my advice would be to get into spreadsheets. Email 20 people or businesses a day and keep a log of who you're spamming. Eventually, you'll get a hit, I guarantee, and it then it only gets easier from there.  

via Nora Kelly

AC: Do you find there's a difference between your commissioned work and the work you make purely for yourself? How do you balance the two?

NK: Definitely. My commissioned work is usually based on pictures and comes out more realistic. When I'm doing something for myself, I tend to work from my imagination and take risks, which keeps the whole process exciting. 

AC: What's your creative process like? 

NK: I like to walk my dog and come up with ideas. Usually, I paint at night because I stay up late, and it gives me something to do while my roommates are asleep. 

via Nora Kelly

AC: Who are some other creatives who inspire you?

NK: The most inspirational people are usually the people closest to me. I have a kind of friendly competition with myself, and seeing the people around me giving it their all makes me want to work harder. In terms of favourite acclaimed painters, I've always been fond of Rousseau, Peter Doig, Hilma af Klint and, of course, Francis Bacon. 

Watch Nora Kelly Band's latest music video for their song "Hymn for Agnostics" below.

Nora Kelly

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Malaika Astorga is the Co-Founder & Creative Director of Also Cool. She is a Mexican-Canadian visual artist, writer, and social media strategist currently based in Montreal.

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Artist Spotlight: James Collier

Art by James Collier

Enter the world of James Collier, one filled with birds in suits on their ways to work, night time walks and industrial environments slowly becoming overtaken by nature.

We chatted with James over email to learn more about his creative practice and inspirations. If you find yourself wanting some work of his for your own, you can DM him on Instagram.

Art by James Collier

Also Cool Mag: How did you get into making visual art? What mediums do you use most often?

James Collier: Drawing and cartooning have almost always been part of my life. I learned how to read from Carl Barks' Donald Duck comics and grew up drawing all the time. My dad is a great cartoonist, and there were always comic books around which I would consume voraciously. I never really questioned art-making as a kid and thought making comics and drawing was just an intrinsic part of life, a way of making sense of the world. I stopped drawing altogether for a while though, and it wasn't until age 18 or 19, after a particularly bad mental health episode, that I picked it up again.

Mediums are pencil, ink, paper. Most of it is done in various notebooks with cheap pens or graphite on Stonehenge paper when at home. Though drawing is the most accessible, both cost and space-wise right now, I'd like to explore printmaking more in the near future.

Art by James Collier

Also Cool: What kind of work and aesthetics were you interested in early in your creative practice? What inspires you now?

JC: Again, Carl Barks was a big one. There are a lot of people like Milt Gross and E.C. Segar who were/are big influences. Julie Doucet is continually inspiring – I can't wait for her new book, coming out in the spring.

I'm looking at the printmaking work of people like K the Kollwitz and James Ensor a lot these days. Herge, Joost Swarte, E.S. Glenn. The comics and drawings of Walker Tate as well. The comics and zines of U.K.-based artist Michael Kennedy are very inspiring. I've started looking at Walt Kelly again. I really like Charles Burchfield's paintings. I've also been looking at photographers such as André Kertész and Alfred Stieglitz.

Art by James Collier

AC: Where did you grow up? How did your upbringing shape your ideas about art and design?

JC: I grew up in Hamilton, Ontario. Hamilton is a city known for steel manufacturing. It's pretty grey, generally. Plenty of abandoned vacant lots, which I've gone back and drawn. There were also hidden bits of nature that you could get away to. There was an overgrown area known to my family as the "secret spot" that you could get to by canoe, as it was across the Hamilton Bay. I spent a lot of time reading and drawing there. There were also people around that you could collaborate with. My first printed work was with a local kid on my block, where we created a small photocopied zine entitled "The Guy who Never Returned" at age six. I don't remember what was in it, but we went around selling it on the street.

Art by James Collier

AC: How has your personal style developed over time? Can you tell us a bit about your bird characters?

JC: It's just the result of continually drawing in sketchbooks. It's a subconscious development, so it just changes incrementally over time. It's hard to track development. 

As for the bird characters, while working as a window washer, I would be very tired at the end of the day and barely have time to make a few doodles and scribbles before bed. The birds emerged in my sketchbook one night while fatigued, and I've kept drawing them since. Related to this, I'm working on a comic right now about a duck with insomnia.

AC: Tell us a bit about the creative communities you've connected with and any artists/projects within them who inspire you.

JC: I'm lucky that I currently live around many talented artists. Being able to show things to people around you helps with not becoming disillusioned. I've found creative communities even in the world of minimum-wage work. When I was working at Metro Food Inc., as a greeter during the height of the pandemic, I had many discussions with the security guard about old animation and art history. Right now, I work at an art supply store with nice people who are very encouraging when I show them drawings.

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James Collier is a cartoonist and visual artist originally from Hamilton, Ontario and currently living in Montréal, Quebec.

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A Visual History of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours Illustrated by Michayla Grbich

Also Cool is proud to present a visual history of Rumours by Fleetwood Mac by Michayla Grbich. This is the first in a series of illustrated musical histories by Michayla.

We’ve included the full album below so that you can listen as you read for the full experience.

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Michayla Grbich is an illustrator with strong interests in portraiture, storytelling, history, music, and pop culture. She enjoys exploring and pushing narratives through her art, utilizing symbols, icons, and colors to set the tone for her work.

If you’re as in love as we are with Michayla’s beautiful work, you can find information for commissions, and more of her work below. For freelance or commission inquiries please email michayla.grbich.art (@) gmail.com

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Artist Spotlight: Sophie El Assaad

Hello, and welcome to a small walk-through of the world of Sophie El Assaad.

Sophie is an award-winning designer, director, and theatre-maker, and she cannot help but ooze her lovely sweet creative aura. I would describe her energy as a light fluffy mist that may crack with a low rumble or quick flash of lightning. 

With her company, Theatre Nuaj, she has developed the project Black Balloon in many iterations: live outdoors in Centaur Theatre’s Portico Project late 2020, as Leila, a short film presented at Centaur Theatre’s 2021 Wildside Festival, and through multiple residencies.

This interview was held over two sessions with the intent to give a non-linear progression and experience of Sophie’s thoughts and world through visuals, direct quotes, as well as some snippets of her work or inspiration.

Sophie has curated a playlist here, that I would encourage you to listen to as you read through.

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Segment from experimental video ( Sophie El Assaad, circa 2014)

I thought about this word yesterday.
[ Underbelly ]

Maybe I should have used it when describing themes I like to work with artistically; the hidden violent side that exists in people.

“For my birthday, my dad got me a cake, my mum got me a cake, and my sister got me a cake. It was perfect.”

On working in residency on Black Balloon:

In the past, I approached work via building a very solid core and working my way out of it, but what my last creation residency has done (working with dancers and movement actors) was it allowed me to be use impulse and intuition, working from the outside in, and discovering what that means afterward — the whole process of trusting the work and the process has been super interesting — very scary and always kept me on my toes, but, in the end, amounted to something reliant on body and emotions rather than intellectuality.

I really like involving artists that don’t necessarily specialize in the medium, who can contribute to the piece in unexpected ways and teach me. I just love surprises. The actor who played Leila (Maria Marsli) was not an actor before we worked together, for example.

Segment from Sophie El Assaad’s video Leila, shown at the Centaur Theatre’s Wildside Festival in 2021 ( This process is made possible by the support from the Government of Québec and the City of Montréal as part of l’Entente sur le développement culturel de Montréal, and from the Canada Council for the Arts)

Sometimes in film, I think that theatricality is lost because you have the liberty to take many takes to get it exactly how you want and perfect it. Filming a mistake rather than having to start again could be a form of theatricality in video that I am interested in exploring. Those moments really drive me - those moments of live, unpredictable human behaviour, mistakes.

I really love paying attention to the little details that happen in the in between space — the micro moments before going into action. Observing that – it’s so beautiful when you can see it and take the time to watch the brain processing and how it translates through the body.

It’s been amazing to shift my process upside down and give more control to other artists involved in my process- it’s liberating and collaborative! It leaves a lot of room for surprise and the unpredictable.

The photo was taken by Sophie El Assaad of Chadia Kikondjo for the project Black Balloon: Portico Project. 2020

An important image for Black Balloon was the moon. There’s a theory that the moon was created by a collision that happened between the earth and another planet and all the debris that was created from the collision that was floating around the orbit of the earth came together through gravity to form the moon. So it was through destruction that this essential part of our world was created.

“I’ve always wanted to be the kind of person to memorize poetry and say it to someone in the right moment.”

On decolonizing work and family history:

I am trying to decolonize my work by doing a lot more research into my own culture and bringing that into the process. I’m Lebanese, and I grew up in Bahrain, but I find I am very Western in how I was brought up; my mum is British, and I went to Western schools. So everything I learned in terms of history and art is from a Western perspective. So I’m going through this process right now — it’s kind of like an identity crisis or rebirth — of rediscovering my father, his culture and baggage, through my art. In a way, it feels like the longer I am physically away from my Middle Eastern roots, the more I try to get closer to it through my work. There is an invisible thread tying me to the sea, the sounds of street cats and the call to prayers, the salt in the air, the sand and the rocky desert. It’s like a past life that I constantly mourn. Even though I love my current life and probably wouldn’t move back, there is a certain void.

Image of my paternal ancestors. My grandmother is the young girl between the man and woman.

My dad shows his love through cooking. Every Sunday, my dad cooks and my sister and I go and spend time with the family (as much as we can). He actively plans his weekend around what he is going to cook for us. It’s a great way to bring me back to my past living in Bahrain, or summers spent in Beirut with family, because he mostly cooks Lebanese food (even though my mum’s British palette doesn’t always leap for joy at it). He’s a very silent man and there's a lot about him that I find very mysterious. Sometimes it’s hard to connect. That’s kind of why I feel driven to researching and creating through my ancestral culture. It’s also a way for me to connect with and rediscover my dad.

Image of a broken mirror (photo by Sophie El Assaad)

Something that has been inspiring me lately are the traces of life that you can find in dead material. I am obsessed! An example would be a shattered mirror – it holds the traces of the action in its appearance. It has so much energy locked into its absolute stillness.

Flayed Man Holding a Dagger and His Skin, From Juan Valverde de Amusco, Anatomia del corpo humano, 1560

Some of my favourite ways of working costumes are when I can put a lot of energy or emotion into a fabric – new fabric (especially when it is machine made) is “dead”, but the more you manipulate it, the more it absorbs your energy and holds traces of that love or hate – like human skin. You can often tell the kind of life a person has had from their skin and it’s the same with material. If you give love to material, you can see it. And I try to put that into consideration as much as possible when I’m thinking of design and how I treat my materials. They’ll share their life story with anyone who’ll pay attention, using their own unique language.

I love the body. That’s why I love theatre, performance and dance. There is something I am really drawn to in certain art – it’s this primal connection that, as humans, we tend to neglect or actively conceal in our daily lives. I love to see the body do things that I don’t get to see in my daily life because it’s a part of my being that I don’t really get to explore. Witnessing our primal side, or the animal within us, is cathartic for me. There is a violence inside all of us that I think is dormant but easily awoken. We see it in times of war, or political hysteria.

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“There is a secret part of me that I would really love to have more opportunity to explore – my clown.”

When I say clown, I mean a weird creepy out of control thing. I have this clown that I only present to some people. I don’t know what their name is yet, but she’s a troll. She comes out sometimes when I am in a special mood.

Self-portrait of one of my inner trolls. 2022

When I get into my clown, it just happens naturally and not very often – it’s funny, talking about it makes it sound as though it’s a real thing that is developed, but I have only recently discovered her. She comes out when I say something mean or that I consider unreasonable (or when I get exaggeratedly emotional/passionate) – “ah there she is! The troll is out”. It’s my way of coping with my inner animal.

I don’t know if stories belong to anybody – it’s not necessarily about where a person is from or what they have personally experienced, but how a story is told. I definitely think that if someone wants to talk about an experience or an identity that isn’t theirs, they need to make sure they work with people who have that experience or identity, to make sure the story is developed in an informed way. It is important to have that authentic perspective.

I think artists need to be accountable for how they represent people, especially if those people are marginalised in society and already have that weight to carry. There is an ethical question to ask about whether you are profiting from a situation that misrepresents others. I think there is great responsibility that comes with the privilege of being an artist who is given a public platform.

Unfinished painting of a horse by Sophie El Assaad

Image from a workshop of a creation piece by Sophie El Assaad ,2022. Lighting designed by Zoe Roux and modeled by Nasim Lootij.

Image from Sophie El Assaad’s video Leila, shown at the Centaur Theatre’s Wildside Festival in 2021 (Chadia Kikondjo as Mother Moon; This process is made possible by the support from the Government of Québec and the City of Montréal as part of l’Entente sur le développement culturel de Montréal, and from the Canada Council for the Arts)

On process:

I saw a lot of my early work as internships – there wouldn’t be a lot of budget or pay, but what I did get was experience and a platform, so I saw those as my opportunities to go all out and take risks (I also chose projects that really inspired me, so it fueled me in other ways than just financial). For me, the extra time put into the work was worth it. I don’t know if it’s what I would recommend to others, but it’s what I did to get my career started.

Costumes designed by Sophie El Assaad for the show Jonathan Livingston: A Seagull Parable, (Surreal SoReal/ Geordie Theatre, photo by Marie Andrée Lemire)

“If I have an idea I think, ‘Can I do it? Maybe not, but why not try and see what happens?’”

Mask created by Sophie El Assaad for the band Fleece for album Stunning and Atrocious in 2021. Photograph by Cameron Mitchell, Styling by Kayleigh Choiniere, Clothes by Lucas Stowe and modeled by Owen.

“I would also love to make a play about pigeons. Write a play, or ask someone to write a play and just have giant pigeons having a conversation.”

My pigeon friends Pin Pin and Smithy (the ones that live on my building, that I feed) – they’ve started this repetitive occurrence. Every morning they have a choir session. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard pigeons but they gather so close to my windows and it’s a cacophony of chirps and bubbles. It is so beautiful.

I have a fascination with birds. I love seeing little sparrows in the winter when they’re in the bushes — because they look like leaves but then they move around — so it becomes a sort of like, magical and alive bush.

I think recording rehearsals can be useful in my future projects – seeing how accidents can become pieces in themselves. But I also see it as a way of approaching the process. For example, what would happen if you filmed something, like a small gesture, edited it on video to slow down or twitch it, then brought it back into rehearsal. Being influenced by the technology and what that offers and finding how it can bring meaning is something I want to experiment with. I think it could bring unexpected approaches to movement and performance. Video is like a second pair of eyes, noticing the little details you can’t capture during a rehearsal. 

“There is something about the early rehearsal process, the magic that comes during improv. Because it’s live and in the moment — it’s so raw and unrehearsed, completely reliant on intuition — it’s truly magic.”

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Sophie El Assaad

Holly Hilts is a core member of Also Cool. She is a maker of things: theatre sets, jewelry and websites, currently based in Montreal.

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Chimbites x Plastique Famille Present Almas, an Immersive Experience for Ancestral Healing (Balistikal, Cité-des-Hospitalières)

As the world slowly opens up, we begin to celebrate and heal with each other. At a time when collective healing is needed more than ever, the Chimbites and Plastique Famille are hosting Almas from November 10-15 at Chapelle de la Cité-des-Hospitalieres, raising money for Balistikal's Anti-Clinica.

Almas (Souls) is a week-long exhibit centred around the re-interpretation of spirituality through a queer, anti-colonial lens and the deconstruction of ancestral trauma linked to religion. Tickets available HERE

By RICO SERNA via Chimbites

CHIMBITES is an international artistic network born in Tiohtià:ke / Montreal and Colombia in 2020, when Rico Serna and Julicore began working together to curate, develop and produce fundraising events. Their work is rooted in intersectionality and mutual aid, focusing on raising awareness and redistributing opportunities and resources, aiming for global equity.

With members in Bogota, Barcelona and Montreal, their goal is to organize exhibitions and events to showcase, empower and connect LGBTQIA+, BIPOC artists, while fundraising for their communities. By booking artists from near and far, they seek to provide a common international platform that provides equal compensation for their work.

PLASTIQUE FAMILLE is an artistic entity born in Mexico in 2016 founded by Diego Israel and Monica Olvera, operating as a platform to create, develop and launch ideas. Their work orbits around new technologies, decolonial practices, critical thinking, and social relationships in arts & culture. PF has been based in Toronto since 2017, with different members worldwide. They have grown into an established newcomer organization by creating and engaging with different communities, developing artistic management, which centres a human approach in our interactions with the artists and their work. They seek to understand needs more holistically, engaging with artists on many aspects of their process, co-creating pathways that suit their needs in terms of mental health, ability and financial capacity.

Chimbites and Plastique Famillie aim to (re)appropriate the colonized segregation space, "the church," by showcasing artists from various backgrounds to create a sacred space for our community to express their artistic views on spirituality, mental health, and healing. A "ceremony" will take place on Saturday, featuring performers and musicians, aiming to raise funds for a mental and spiritual health fund for Balistikal, an LGBTIA2S +, Afro-descendant, indigenous and migrant community in Latin America.

Cité-des-Hospitalières via Chimbites

Balistikal is a community organization whose mission is to heal, transform and cultivate the Afro and Indigenous LGBTIQ+ community. Their Anti-clinic offers healing services such as Tarot, Oracle, Astral chart, sexology, dream interpretation, Reiki, meditation, and more. Their next event will take place on November 18, and they need our support to raise funds to offer 80 free spots for Trans and Black individuals in need of healing services.

By NEAGONORREA, LAKRAS, OTRUS EXTRAVIADUS via Chimbites

The Cité-des-Hospitalières is a former convent based in Tiohtiá:ke, also known as Montreal, the unceded traditional territory of the Kanien'kehá:ka Nation. It constitutes a unique spiritual and sensory space, protected from the turbulence of the city by the wall of the formerly cloistered complex. The Cité has been open as a transitory space in recent months, inviting innovative projects that re-imagine inclusive and transformative uses of this exceptional heritage site.

Featured artists: PABLO BARESCH (Video Performance), DIANE GARCIA RAMOS (Sculpture), EDSON NIEBLA ROGIL (Short Film), NEUS LAKRAVIADUS (Short Film & Photographs), SANTIAGO MENDEZ & GABRIEL PITO (Photograph), JOSÉ L. MENÉDEZ (Painting), RICO SERNA (Photography), PRINCESS PRADA, PASTIZAL ZAMUDIO (Performance), JULICORE & SANTIAGO HURTADO (Short Film)

With performances by Kokettte, Araya Guanipa, and Zi1oj and musical performances by Chivengi, Deidre Opal, Syana Barbara

Sensorial Environment by Diane García Ramos, Earth Note Scents/Daniela Madrid, Corium, and onyyysumo

Emotional support on-site in collaboration with AGIR Montréal Thursday 11 & Friday 12

Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th, 15:00-18:00 - On November 10, 11, 12 and 15, free admission, donations will be accepted at the door.

The venue is wheelchair accessible. COVID-19 Protocols will be followed.

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Malaika Astorga is the Co-Founder & Creative Director of Also Cool. She is a Mexican-Canadian visual artist, writer, and social media strategist currently based in Montreal.

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Artist Spotlight: Henry Hu

whitesink by Henry Hu (inkjet print on cotton rag 24 x 16 cm) from passing parade, 2019 (10/10)

How do you decide to go from civil engineering to making a career for yourself as a visual artist? How do you know when it’s the right time to trust your intuition, and make that major life change that you need? For Henry Hu, these kinds of decisions have shaped his journey to becoming a full-time visual artist.

Exercising through various mediums, Henry Hu's (born 1995 Hong Kong) emerging practice commits to an infusion. An exchange. An immediacy. A link between the interior and the exterior — of a self, a being, an identity, a consciousness. 

Each individual series offers an overarching narrative, steps away from the present for a spell: tasked with casting new perspectives, fresh air to breathe, a spiritual relief. Often juxtaposing the past with the future, differing forms of surrealistic fantasies unfold across his works; along with a recurring structure, the heart of all series rests in harmony.

To be presented in dialogue with one another, all proposing works speak to the different natures of human existence, the quiet, the chaotic, those hushed periods, and at times the buzzing bangs.

Earlier this summer, we spoke to Henry about his work, travels, and how he decided to switch from civil engineering to visual art.

airydust by Henry Hu (inkjet print on cotton rag 24 x 16 cm) from passing parade, 2019 (4/10)

Malaika Astorga for Also Cool: Let's start at the beginning. Has your creative practice always been a part of your life? How has it changed over time?

Henry Hu: No, not at all -- growing up, on no occasion was I engaged in anything creative, I suppose I just didn't particularly care for it. Looking back, I was nonchalant. My younger self was rather indifferent; nothing at school piqued my interest, and I never really paid much attention or even had the ambition to achieve anything. Quite honestly, I was just sort of present, unoccupied, existing really, that's all. Not once did it cross my mind, the desire to devote myself. But I did enjoy movies; that was the one childhood obsession that persisted over the years. 

It wasn't until at university, shortly after I started a degree in civil engineering that it didn't seem worthwhile. Still, I didn't dare to picture a future in a creative line of work. Then, it all came about ... a realization. I acted on an impulse, and from there, my inclination to pursue arts and film quickly hardened into determination. 

I began doing small series of digital arts, both static and motion works. It made sense for me spatially, didn't cost a lot, only a computer was needed. Meanwhile, I buried myself in films, day in, day out, revisiting different eras of past cinema. Eventually, the works from directors like Antonioni, Éric Rohmer, Víctor Erice, Edward Yang, Kieślowski, Woody Allen stood out and entirely broadened, reshaped my perception of films. It was then when I started to write. Straightway I recognized the familiarity; it was comfortable. I was at ease and was confident that films would be my primary outlet. I also registered that it would be a long road ahead before I could actualize my screenplays. 

Anyhow, I kept on with the visual works, trying out various mediums. Graphics, art books, photographs, and a little later, mixed media initiated the urge to coexist physical and digital arts. Until then, I had been utilizing solely digital tools, so it was essentially the desire to do something concrete, dynamic, and perhaps on a larger scale. With that in mind, I made new sets of digital artworks, specifically for print, onto numerous fabrics, surfaces -- eager to see how they would interact with raw materials: acrylics, spray paints, threads, modelling doughs. Trials and errors charted the progress, noting the little details. The end result was a plunge into maximalism, a playful flux of colour. But still, traces of everything pre-existed. 

It is merely fortuitous that this new direction, quite the polar opposite, from the films I have envisioned, which are all very hushed and quiet, muted tones. Nonetheless, it is a nice balance, separating the two mediums.

Selected work from night dot surrender by Henry Hu (2020)

Also Cool: You've lived in so many incredible cultural hubs. Can you tell us a bit about each one and what your experience was like there?

Henry: I was raised in Hong Kong, up north. I had a pleasant childhood and had many uneventful years of growth. I wouldn't have appreciated it then, but it is a time now I feel very fond of. My parents took us hiking quite often, surprisingly. For such a small city, Hong Kong has a wide-ranging of walking trails and mountains. Nature, I think, the fields, the woods, spring, winter, the clouds overhead, the streams beneath, they are gifts for a child. 

At fourteen, I started attending a boarding school in Queensland, Australia. There was a drastic shift in environment, to say the least, but frankly, there wasn't much to take away; they were good years. And the changes were all surface level, however significant they might seem first. 

Following high school, I moved to Sydney for university, and, well, that's that. To be fair, I never did feel deeply rooted in any particular place, culture -- but I am awfully glad for the experiences. It is what it is.

Selected work from night dot surrender by Henry Hu (2020)

AC: You switched out of a degree in civil engineering and instead developed your passion for art and film. What was that process like? How did you learn to trust your intuition in that way?

H: It was months of dissonance and dread. A turbulent time for me, so to speak. The loss of a dear friend. Riddled with unrest, unsettled. I turned inward. It wasn't very dramatic, and it didn't happen overnight. But once I went forward with the visual works and writings, I realized that I belonged. That was it. 

Strangely enough, it was then that I saw myself coming into being for the first time. I suppose you have to narrow yourself to a point, for better or worse. Staying truthful, being mindful, what to do, what not to do, within reason. The ring of authenticity. It is difficult to hold the line, and it is difficult to stay true, but it is very fulfilling to the spirit. Having reached an understanding, of sorts, to yourself. 

Now I tend to believe there wasn't actually any underlying cause -- obviously, the events that occurred factored in. Everything factored in. And yet, sometimes, it's just meant to be. When I discontinued the degree, it was liberating. I never gave it a thought other than to be sort of pleased. I wasn't at all seeking validation; I just got on with it. So it was, more or less, the willingness to accept, to really heed your own thoughts and feelings. They can be very telling. All things considered, I am grateful, at that very moment, the external circumstances allowed me to proceed, to an extent. I was granted the privilege to move forward, so it was fortunate for me, I guess. 

In the end, it also just boils down, instead of letting the decisions be governed by fear -- simply, a leap of faith. Not necessarily any grand expectations. More so, a belief, the self-assurance that it was the right path -- I, myself, made the conscious decision to commit, with that, whatever happens, happens … and, that's okay.

motor by Henry Hu (inkjet print on cotton rag 24 x 16 cm) from passing parade, 2019 (5/10)

AC: What's the creative scene like where you are right now? What do you like about it, and what do you wish there was more of?

H: Earlier in the year, I had the opportunity to assist with indie films around Sydney. It was educative to spend time on set, to be observant. All around, it was delightful. As far as visual arts, well, in truth, I don't really know … Everybody does it differently. There are no rules. I had always intended to make some things on my own before branching out, connecting, and sharing. And so I did; I stayed underground, gave myself the time and space to work. But I am sure it's a very interesting scene out there, and now I look forward to getting more involved.

it hangs by Henry Hu (inkjet print on cotton rag 24 x 16 cm) from passing parade, 2019 (8/10)

AC: I'm interested in how you incorporate sequencing into your work. Can you expand on this?

H: From the beginning, my approach was to develop full bodies of work, no matter the medium. For the most part, especially with the photographs and digital stuff, once I feel I have enough materials. I take a few days, occasionally a few weeks off, a clearing. Afterwards, I come back, work on the sequencing, and finish off. This was a process that emerged incidentally. Now I do it on purpose. 

With the mixed media works, it was somewhat different. I had all the pieces visualized, sketched out before getting hands-on with the paints. I was attentive, more meticulous, and deliberate with the materials and structures -- how this particular piece should close out the series or how this colour won't work unless applied to that specific texture. I did put in extra precision and clarity -- constructing, rearranging, bits here, pieces there. It was a new thing for me; I had no prior knowledge of paints. I thought if I were to do this, I might as well do it the way that felt most organic. I listen to music when I work. My mind would have been filled with second-hand rhythms and tempos, ingrained with a given flow, pacing of things. After all, it is instinctive. Now and then, things naturally align. They seem genuine and sincere. I will just leave it at that. It would be very unwise to fight against it.

let in by Henry Hu (inkjet print on cotton rag 24 x 16 cm) from passing parade, 2019 (6/10)

AC: Who are some artists/creatives that are really inspiring you right now? (feel free to shout out friends)

H: I have been reading, re-reading a bunch lately. Sylvia Plath, her journals are something I return to regularly. Anne Truitt, who was known for her sculptures, but her writings are very stimulating to me. They are well worth the read. 

With films, this young Chinese writer-director Bi Gan, his works are precious, I highly await whatever he does next. 

Current music excites me a great deal. Mount Eerie, Julia Holter, Beach House, Weyes Blood, Florist, Perfume Genius, Car Seat Headrest, Let's Eat Grandma, James Blake, Tomberlin, Jockstrap, Laura Marling, Snail Mail. This year only, new records from Dry Cleaning, Vince Staples, Wolf Alice, Black Country New Road, Julien Baker. It's just joyful to have so much I could anticipate all the time. It's a good feeling. And also, Helena Deland, I came across her debut last year, been playing it ever since. (A nice surprise to see there's an interview piece with her on Also Cool!)

AC: What are you hoping to do more of in 2021, both creatively and career-wise?

H: Sydney is in lockdown at the moment. A chance to entertain new ideas. It's been productive. Did some digital art stuff. Continuing with the screenplays, visual references and research, all that. Just getting on, really -- I don't know how it's all going to pan out, but I am satisfied, the journey so far, I guess we will see.

Henry Hu

Website I Instagram I Twitter

Malaika Astorga is the co-founder of Also Cool. She is a Mexican-Canadian visual artist, writer, and social media strategist currently based in Montreal.

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Miles Away Perfectly Captures Our Lustful, Summer Nostalgia

Still from Miles Away. Photos provided by the filmmakers

Nostalgia, heartbreak, toxicity, growing up, losing yourself… “Miles Away” portrays the deep nuances and contradictions of existence, the difficulty of navigating love when you lose yourself too deeply in its web, and when the last rays of the summer sun hit you with a wave of regret. Miles Away was the summer anti-love story we all needed.

I met with the film’s executive producer and production designer, Naomi Berezowsky, on a hot and humid Tuesday afternoon in Montreal. We sat down on the window ledge of her wood-paneled industrial loft she shared with other creatives throughout the pandemic, a space of art and collectivity. The late afternoon sun gave the room a warm summer atmosphere as we talked about Miles Away and her involvement with the film.

Still from Miles Away. Photos provided by the filmmakers

Losing Yourself and Finding Your Way Back with Miles Away

“At its core, the film is an anti-love story, set between the worlds of jazz and skateboarding. It serves as a time capsule for pre-pandemic 20-somethings evading the responsibilities of adulthood for the dream of an endless party, with no consequence.”

The story-less story follows Miles and Lulu as their worlds melt together when they fall in love, and the disintegration of that world. From drugs to skateboarding to making art in morning sun after a night of sex, the film touches upon the most intimate, seemingly insignificant moments of life which are what make us all too human. It is like a bird’s-eye view into those situations where we find ourselves feeling powerful, and yet are at our most vulnerable.

Shot in black and white, the nostalgia of the film is not just captured by the complex relationships, dialogues, and interactions between the characters, but by the beautiful Vancouver locations chosen by the team. From rollercoasters and urban parks to make-shift jazz clubs, the shooting was truly what Berezowsky calls “a love letter to Vancouver.”

The film does not follow the classic “lead in - climax - lead out” structure most Hollywood films do. The film is more nuanced than that, embodying the sense of fluidity and lust in the very way it was shot. It brings you closer to the raw experience of life – that hard-hitting reality that your actions will always affect others, no matter how much you try to escape it.

Watching the film, you are confronted with the most simple yet beautiful exposition of a human paradox: how freeing it feels to lose control, yet how destructive it can become when you strive to take control of the uncontrollable. I recommend Miles Away for anyone who has felt that inescapable, existential emptiness that hits when endless summer nights are just a bit too long.

Berezowsky sums it up best when she said, “it’s about when you lose yourself in a substance, you lose yourself in a relationship, you lose yourself in a lust for something... That lust for the endless party.” The cycle of neglecting external issues in youth and learning to take responsibility for oneself in adulthood – Miles Away forces us close to what we seek to push away and hide the most.

Still from Miles Away. Photos provided by the filmmakers

The Making of Miles Away

“As soon as we started filming, we threw away the script.” 

With a low budget of $25,000, Miles Away was shot over 12 days throughout the summer of 2019 after two years of development and prep. The crew committed to a summer schedule of four days a week, divided between filming and additional prep. Miles Away was shot all around the Vancouver area, with a couple of shots taken in Sydney, Australia. Berezowsky describes it as her “saving grace” from the other work she was doing for Hallmark holiday shows.

The film went a little – well, actually, completely – off script. With guidance from the director, who also plays the protagonist Miles, the actors “knew where the scene needed to go, [and] where it needed to end up for the story to be told.” Perhaps this is what gave the film its edge and relatability, what Berezowsky describes as its “organic” quality.

“What’s so interesting about it is that it exists in a semi-crafted reality,” explained Berezowsky. “It sits between truth and fiction, which is just really rare….it’s hard to [compare it] to anything else.” 

Not only did the actors’ instincts guide the film to its result, but the team itself was fluid in its roles. “We all wore a lot of hats because we were such a skeleton crew,” explains Berezowsky, emphasizing the fact that the film was pulled with only about ten people on the production team and thirty on cast. “There were moments when we all had to act as the assistant director,” she continues, especially in moments where the director was in character.

Blurring the lines between fact and fiction may be best illustrated when Berezowky gave a description of her impromptu and unexpected acting role in the film. It happened during the night when one of the most emotionally intense scenes was shot. “It was pushing midnight,” explains Berezowsky, “and everybody was kind of restless.

“I’m a musician and I’m a poet, and to fill this space where everyone was getting a bit restless, I went on the microphone and started reciting any of my slam poetry that I could think of on the spot... Then I sang this song that I actually wrote, [so] my own song is at the very end of the film which is pretty sweet.”

This kind of situation was not uncommon for the production of Miles Away. As she describes it, “I was the production designer and I ended up being in the film substantially… and that was unexpected but that’s just a testament to how organic [everything was] and how everything just unfolded really naturally.

“It was the team’s first time working together, and the first time creating a film for several of them. Receiving proper funding and support has been a difficult part of the process: a lot of people kind of wrote us off and were like ‘these are a bunch of kids with a video camera, good luck,’ and we’re still getting that today.

“[It’s] just about the power of the collective... we push each other, we inspire each other, we champion each other, and that’s why we’re still doing this.”

Behind-the-scenes of Miles Away. Photos provided by the filmmakers

Communicating the Language of the Film: Berezovsky's Story

“Sometimes it’s difficult to ask questions, sometimes it’s difficult to be like… ‘I don’t understand this form of trauma, I don’t understand this form of mental illness.’ But if given the chance to see it played out for you on film, you’re able to experience it vicariously through the character.”

This kind of experience is what Berezovsky,  on the set of Miles Away, helped to bring. “The production designer is responsible for the decorating, they’re responsible for the props, they’re responsible for any art that you see,” she explains. When production design is done well, explains Berezowsky, it is that “ ...you are learning about the character through it.”

Berezowsky began her career in film at twenty-four when she moved to Vancouver from her home state of Washington to study film. She began working on holiday shows, which helped her realize what she didn’t want to do with films: tell laughable and depthless stories “which served no purpose.”

As production designer, her role was to create “the visual language of the film” – the unspoken associations we create in our minds when we look at the environment of a scene. A hole in the wall may communicate anger, empty beer and wine bottles could communicate loneliness.“When you are creating the visual language of a film, it’s about the subtext… When you’re reading the script, and you’re reading the dialogue, and you’re reading these actions, there’s always a subtext to these actions.” 

Filmmaking, what she believes to be “the most powerful medium,” can give people “the chance to see the world through other people’s eyes.” After pausing and thinking, she continues to say that what film provides is the opportunity for people to “be confronted with… a human experience that they wouldn’t necessarily understand – or be able to – and definitely not be able to identify with themselves.”

Aside from her busy filmmaking life, Berezowsky is also part of a band SRFISNOYS, whose upcoming demo you can soon stream on their Soundcloud.

Naomi Berezovsky, the executive producer and production designer of Miles Away. Photo credits to

Miles Away

by Size 8 Studio

written and directed by Samuel Campbell Wilson

produced by Alexandra Francis and Eric Medcalf

Instagram | Support the film on Indie GoGo

Soline Van de Moortele is a Philosophy student at Concordia/insatiable feminist, raver, and writer.

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Artist Spotlight: Camila Gaza Manly / @lysvonasta

Camila Gaza Manly. Photo courtesy of Kitty Evans, styling by Céline Blais.

Looking for an extra touch of magic to brighten up your home – literally? Montreal-based lighting designer Camila Gaza Manly has made it her mission to blend artistry with functionality through her lighting collection known as Lys von Asta. Her craftsmanship maintains a strong sense of curiosity, producing ethereal light sculptures that truly shine.

Through comforting clouds of meringue and cheeky expressions of novelty, Camila’s work proves that it is possible to add whimsy to everyday needs and spaces. In exploring her work, I realize the deep symbolism of lamps in the home. Our spaces can be a reflection of ourselves, offering representations of our tastes and values. While lighting may be broadly used to reveal other decor, lamps themselves can – and should – be works of art.

Scroll on to read my delightful conversation with Camila, peppered with creative influences and reflections on her artistic growth. Take a look around your space, and imagine what more it could be.

The lamps of Lys von Asta. Photo courtesy of Kitty Evans.

Rebecca L. Judd for Also Cool: Hi there Camila, thank you for taking the time to speak with me! I’m so curious about you and your art, and I know our readers are too.

To get started, I would love to know more about your creative background. How did you first emerge as an artist, and as a lighting designer more specifically?

Camila Gaza Manly: I would say both go back pretty far in my life. I grew up on Vancouver Island in BC, so I had a very rural upbringing – surrounded by nature, going to the ocean and camping…  I also went to Waldorf school, which was a big early influence on my development artistically. So when it comes to my artistic style and early background, [those things] are a strong foundation that I still draw from a lot now. 

Both sides of my family are very artistic – my mom’s side is German, and she’s an artist. Both her parents were artists. My whole family [were] painters and sculptors, it’s probably in my blood or something (laughs). My dad's side is half Danish with lots of wood workers, and he's a musician. [His family] had farms and were always working with their hands and being artistic.

I came up with the name for my project during lockdown when I was thinking about my family a lot. ‘Lys’ is the general word for ‘light’ in Danish. It can also be used to mean ‘lamp’ and ‘candle’. ‘von’ means ‘from’ in German, and is part of my mother’s maiden name that I didn’t receive. And ‘Asta’ was my great grandmother's name on my Danish side. I never met her, but have always felt very connected to her. We share petite stature and certain characteristics. She raised twelve children on a farm and lived until the age of 96. She has always been a great source of strength for me. ‘Light from Asta’ is where my heritage and aspirations meet.

When it comes to [transitioning into] lamps, that also started around the same time [in life]. At Waldorf school, my teacher really didn’t like the overhead fluorescent lighting in our classroom. She would turn them off and bring in her own lamps – I think we had about 12 different lamps in the classroom instead of the overhead lighting. I got used to that softer light work environment – I think it might make a lot of people feel less motivated, but I work well in comforting lighting. [Our class] would also do lantern walks, which were outside in the autumn, and we would make our own lanterns. That would be my earliest lamp-making experience. 

I was also lucky enough to work on large-scale lantern festivals with my mom's sister, which is something she did regularly during her illustrious career. My favourite [festival] was the Dark Sky Festival in Jasper. It was an astronomy-based festival, as [Jasper] does not have a lot of light pollution. They had Chris Hadfield talk, and kids could come and see the night sky from cool places. We did a nature walk and we had giant mushroom lamps and little dioramas with space scene backgrounds. It was so magical to create that little walk through the forest.

Also Cool: That's such a tender memory to hold close. [Lamp making] becomes a testament to your growth as a person. It [must be] a really nice constant to have in your life. 

Camila Gaza Manly: I think that’s a good way to put it! It has felt a lot like a constant. My family always had nice lamps, my school always had nice lamps, [and then] transitioning to high school and university was quite different – partly just because of the lighting. 

AC: Right, there are so many reasons why you’d want to create art that’s not only beautiful to look at, but very livable. 
What does it mean to you to produce art through this specific medium? Why does lamp artistry feel like the right outlet for you?

CGM: It kind of feels like it’s my own canvas. I’ve always painted and drawn and worked in wood and sculpted a little bit, but creating something that’s more of a functional sculpture… somehow, it feels more true to who I am. If I just have a canvas or a piece of paper… it’s two-dimensional. I would say the three-dimensional aspect is very big for me right now. 

I finished my degree last year, during the pandemic, in linguistics and philosophy. So [another] part of it too is just that I have been burnt out since finishing school, [but] returning to earlier influences and inspirations has been really inspiring. [These influences] keep feeding off of each other – when I was doing my [100 Days of Creative Prototyping] project, I had all these ideas to begin with, but the more that I would do them, the more they would come, tenfold, all the time. I think it was that daily practice, where even when I didn’t want to do it, I forced myself to do it.

AC: You briefly mentioned your background in linguistics and philosophy. To be in the arts community and not enter it by way of [formal university] training … I’m curious to know how you think that affects or enhances your art.

CGM: On the business side, it gives me a strong foundation to organize things. I was really involved in the linguistics community, so I got a lot of experience managing and organizing events. 

I feel really happy that I did the degree I did, even though right now I’m pursuing something totally different. Before I studied linguistics, I was studying French – just to live in [Montreal] – and that’s how I found out about the linguistics program. [Even] before that, my plan was to go to school and study industrial design, because I wanted to make lamps.

But had I done that, I wouldn’t be making the lamps I’m making now. I'm sure I would be making cool stuff, but I feel glad that it happened the way it did – now I'm making things that are completely out of my own head and sometimes they're pretty funky and weird.

I’ve had friends who’ve gone to art school and sometimes I was envious of the ability to just go to a studio and take that time off of thinking and writing papers. I wanted to take some elective classes but it’s hard to do that. But seeing my friends go through formal art training, I feel like it’s really limiting in a lot of ways. You learn a lot, but I think some people lose their personal creative [touch]. 

AC: You need to think about it, too, through a lens of “transferable skills” and thinking about what it is you bring to the table. It's intimidating to consider the inaccessibility of certain resources, by virtue of not studying [your craft]. But it's also really exciting to think about “okay, how can I turn it around?”

CGM: I think it also created a necessity for me to return to making things with my hands. I love academics, but I’ve always needed that balance. It’s so refreshing to engross myself in a project where I don’t need to go “X, Y, Z…”

The lamps of Lys von Asta. Photo courtesy of Kitty Evans, styling by Céline Blais.

AC: Looking at lamp artistry as its own specific field within fine arts and design, what does the arts community for this kind of creativity look like, and how have you participated or interacted with it?

CGM: [I interact] definitely through inspiration and influences… like Isamu Noguchi, who made the Akari light sculptures in the same timeline as mid-century modern furniture. He modernized a traditional approach – he [used] a lot of traditional Japanese craftsmanship to make them. I think I love [his designs] because they are such a beautiful mix between the old and the new. I am attracted to where those [styles] meet – there’s a lot of lighting nowadays that is very cold and corporate-feeling, so I have a desire to see more soft and organic lighting on the market.

Besides Noguchi, I am also inspired by Danish mid-century style... Mads Caprani and Le Klint. There’s a traditional blend of a wood frame within a pleated paper lampshade. Those are also influences.

When I first started making [my lamps] during my project, I kept feeling like I needed to search out other small lighting companies. It is great to connect with them – I have found some cool accounts on Instagram and Pinterest or different places on the Internet. But I think it’s also just been refreshing to connect with artists from all different disciplines who are taking their craftsmanship and putting a personal twist on it. It feels really welcoming to connect with people like that, even if we are not making the same thing.

AC: That’s awesome – and going back to what we were talking about with versatility, it’s this thought of “perhaps I specialize in this one thing, but that doesn't mean I can't connect with other fields and other ways of doing and thinking”. It’s also good to get in touch with nostalgia and connect with fundamental creators.

CGM: I think, because I'm making the prototypes completely by hand, I feel more inspired by other people who are also making everything by hand… whereas a lot of lighting nowadays is industrial and mass-produced, and I feel that there are some pretty cool designs, but there’s something lost between creating a prototype and getting a factory to make it.

AC: Are there any creative influences that you have held close over time?

CGM: Yes! There’s a hat designer based in Berlin – Maryam Keyhani. Her Instagram, her whole website and business just looks like a dream.  I feel like there’s this connection between hats and lamps – there’s a similarity in shape and form. I love seeing how [Keyhani] creates, it’s so influenced by play and experimentation and feels very free.

I am also inspired by architects and sculptors from the mid-century era, like Charles and Ray Eames. I actually made a little model of the [Eames house] during my project and put a light inside. And [Alexander] Calder – I made quite a few lamps that were inspired by his mobile sculptures, where there’s wire connectors and parts that hang and turn.

With [the artist] Yayoi Kusama and her polka dots, I love the idea of getting wrapped up in something you love and it consumes your life in a good way. Lastly, there’s Masha Reva who lives in Ukraine – she does these cool sculptures made out of vegetables, and does large-scale drawings and paintings as well. With artists like that, working in several different mediums, I’m always really inspired.

Camila Gaza Manly surrounded by Lys von Asta lamps. Photo courtesy of Kitty Evans, styling by Céline Blais.

AC: Congratulations on completing your 100 Days of Creative Prototyping project! It seems like the process was rather fruitful for you, and there were so many goodies to come out of it (I’m partial to the open-faced lamp with the pearl, so divine.) Could you elaborate on your intentions for this project, and how it served your creative growth to finish it?

CGM: The intentions of this project were to create a practice for what I wanted to commit to. At the beginning, it literally was practice – I was practicing folding, putting different shapes together and working with different kinds of papers and materials. 

In early January, I was just making paper lampshades because I wanted to start learning how to make them. Then I heard about the 100 Day Project as a thing that anyone can do, at any time. I think [the challenge] was more popular in the winter, we were still in the middle of lockdown and curfew in Montreal. When I heard about the 100 Day Project, I was also terrified, because most people do a little drawing or a little dance, and I'm going to make a hundred lamps (laughs).

I was partially inspired to do something so ambitious by this ceramic artist in the States, Lolly Lolly Ceramics. She previously did this project and had 100 black mugs with a different kind of handle on each one. That had me thinking what a challenge it would be, but also how creative it forces you to be. 

I was also able to work on my tendencies towards perfectionism. I always wanted everything to be perfect, and that’s quite hindering when you want to move forward and get new ideas. I thought this project was a good way to move away from that. Every night, whether I loved it or hated it, I forced myself to post it on Instagram – which was really hard because sometimes I wasn’t happy with them. Now, as I’m on the other end of it, and I’m taking all the inspiration from the project, it’s really great to look back [at] that time and remember all the ups and downs experienced, and to have a controlled view of that.  I can pick and choose which parts I want to take and which parts I want to leave behind, because as much as I was prototyping designs, I was also prototyping techniques – and I think that’s the biggest takeaway for me going forward. There are still some designs that I am tweaking to make and sell, and others where I just made them purely for fun and to experiment.

AC: At the end of the day, if you’re completing the assignment then you’re completing the assignment. That exercise in self-accountability must have been so rewarding.

CGM: Yes! The process also made me analyze it in different ways. At one point in the project, I thought “Oh, I should be alternating… so one day, I’ll make a hanging lamp, and one day I’ll make a standing lamp”. But some days I wasn’t inspired to make a hanging lamp, I wanted to do something else. I had to find that balance of what’s actually important here and then move forward with that. 

Camila Gaza Manly surrounded by Lys von Asta lamps. Photo courtesy of Kitty Evans, styling by Céline Blais.

AC: Are there any major lessons that your creative journey has taught you? What do you feel that you have yet to learn?

CGM: Something that I felt I learned through the [100 Days of Creative Prototyping] process was what can be done in a certain amount of time and what can’t. As much as [the project] fed my inspiration and kept me going – the medium I was working in, paper, was really accessible for that process – I was still really curious to add other materials. With the project, I kept feeling the limit of the time constraint and how I couldn’t go further. I want to work with wood eventually, like a wooden base with a paper lampshade. I’m also interested in clay, and ways to make a stronger structure for some of them, especially the standing ones – I didn’t make any floor lamps because of that reason, but I would love to in the future.

There’s also a lesson I’ve learned from the artists in my life. When you think you make a mistake, it's often the best part of what comes out of it, even if it’s really frustrating in the moment. I definitely had a lot of those moments during the project where something went wrong and I was like “This is not what I wanted!”, but at the end of it, it was better than I could have imagined. So I think when you plan something, you can only plan it so far until you actually do it. With the project, what was really cool is I didn’t have time to plan. I didn’t have time to get these perfect images in my head and then try to execute them. I was taking this lesson and putting it into action.

In terms of what I have yet to learn, I definitely want to explore different folding techniques moving forward, because I learned quite a few in the beginning, but I would then keep using the same ones in different ways with patterns or colours or a picture depicted on [the folding]. I want to practice more with creating sculptural shapes. There are a million possibilities. For me, it's partly a challenge because I was never good at math, and there's quite a bit of math involved with the types of folding that I've been doing. It can be quite technical. 

AC: Thank you so much for your time, Camila. What can we expect from you next, and how can we support your work?

CGM: Right now, I’m working on my website. I will be offering an online web shop, and I’m going to have a drop of lamps when I launch. I’m still tweaking some things, but I want to have some made-to-order lamps available as well as [opportunities for] commissions. [Note: Camila’s site is now live - check it out here!]

I also want to have [my lamps] accessible for other opportunities – months ago, I was part of a music video for a local musician. [Félix Dyotte]. I brought my lamps there to be part of the set. It would be great, moving forward, to offer [my lamps] if someone wanted them for wedding photographs or something else. I would love to collaborate with people in the future, because I feel like it’s such a special opportunity to create warm, intimate environments.

[Finally], I will be joining a Chicago-based online platform called Bird & Tale. It's run by husband-and-wife duo Brad Stumpf and Jeffly Gabriela Molina. He is a painter and works at a lighting company, and she is primarily a painter. They feature incredible emerging artists and designers through their online platform and their physical showroom in Chicago. My lamps will be showcased both online and in the showroom. I’m really looking forward to being in such wonderful artistic company!

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Camila Gaza Manly / Lys Von Asta

Instagram | Website

Rebecca L. Judd (she/they) is the features editor of Also Cool Mag. She writes and creates out of a studio apartment in Ottawa, kept company by vivid dreams and a cuddly grey kitty named Dora.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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