Adrift: an Installation by Collectif Incognito, with the participation of Joséphine Bacon
(From left to right) Rafael Sottolichio, painter; Olivier Roy, assistant sound designer; Mary-Dailey Desmarais, chief curator, MMFA; Frédéric Reddy, sound designer; André Robitaille, art director, Collectif Incognito; Stéphane Aquin, director, MMFA; and Joséphine Bacon, author. Photo Pierre Longtin
Since 2013, the MMFA has been commissioning creators to design installations that cover the stretch of Du Musée Avenue north of Sherbrooke Street that gets transformed into a pedestrian walkway for the summer. This year, the group Collectif Incognito invites passersby and Museum visitors to meditate on the fragile balance in which nature lies, through the words of Joséphine Bacon, storyteller, lyricist and director, and ambassador of First Nations culture in Quebec and abroad.
Bordered by the MMFA’s CGI and Max and Iris Stern sculpture gardens, the installation Adrift forms a stream of ice floes scrawled with the poetry of Joséphine Bacon. Sit on one of these glacier-like blocks and scan the QR code with your mobile device to listen to the poem Adrift, recited in Innu by the author, in French by André Robitaille and in English by Laurence Lebœuf.
The installation also echoes themes in the exhibitions Ecologies: A Song for Our Planet and Riopelle: The Call of Northern Landscapes and Indigenous Cultures, currently on view at the Museum.
Adrift was designed by Collectif Incognito for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and was executed with the invaluable support of Ville de Montréal, Ville-Marie Borough, and Denalt Paints. The Museum thanks CGI and the Max and Iris Stern Estate, partners of the Sculpture Garden, as well as all the donors to the annual fundraising campaign.
