Racines créatives
Mar 12, 2026 ― Apr 26, 2026
Racines créatives
March 12 to April 26, 2026
Curator : Nicholas Sangaré
Artists :
Racines Créatives is a group exhibition bringing together 8 artists, designers, and curators from Afro-descendant communities, all connected through a commitment to cultural and social enrichment. The exhibition seeks to create a dialogue between their creative expressions, offering a richly layered cultural portrait. Through a variety of mediums and themes, each participant contributes a unique vision, fostering a collective reflection on cultural identities and urban interactions.
Presented as a multidisciplinary exhibition, Racines Créatives explores the symbiosis between design, industry, and art. It offers a bold and hybrid vision of the archetypes specific to each discipline. In addition to presenting artworks and objects within the exhibition space, the project also includes public programming such as a conversation and an evening of musical performances.
As part of the exhibition, Le Livart is organizing a series of activities:
Guided tour with curator Nicholas Sangaré – March 21 at 2 PM
Panel discussion with Nicholas Sangaré, Audrey Bartis, Rito Joseph, Webster – March 21 at 3 PM
Literary apéro with artists Ian Ospina Pérez, Marie-Ange Sanchez, Inan, Sena, and Leslamo – March 31 at 6 PM
Closing party – April 25 from 9 PM to 6 AM
Artists/Designers’s biography :
A visual artist, through his installations and sculptures, Stanley Février explores the physical and psychological suffering inflicted on individuals by the violences of the modern world. While his politically engaged works draw inspiration from power dynamics in the era of globalization, they also address more intimate questions, such as one’s relationship to self and to others—relationships made increasingly fragile in a world where listening is losing its value. Février’s sensitive gaze and the effectiveness of his visual strategies move audiences emotionally while simultaneously prompting reflection. He seeks to create a space of encounter where participants are at the center of the work. He invites them to repoliticize themselves and affirm their lived experiences in order to complete the artwork—through an awareness of the self, of the collective, of their political power, and of the political understood as care for oneself and for others. A graduate in visual and media arts, his artistic and conceptual concerns are grounded in institutional critique, identity issues, and the violence and inequalities they generate.
Born in Haiti, where art and creativity deeply permeate the culture, Marc-Alain Félix grew up immersed in an enigmatic and colorful environment. Confronted with political and economic instability, he left his homeland to join his mother in Canada. Now based in Montreal, his practice unfolds within an interdisciplinary dynamic that explores notions of materiality, memory, and resilience through various supports such as canvas, paper, and reclaimed wood.
His artistic journey has developed over the years, beginning with his first solo exhibition in 2019. He has taken part in creative residencies and exhibited in several Maisons de la culture. He has presented exhibition projects such as Manipuler avec soins, Rising Colors, and Portraits de familles. The artist has also participated in group exhibitions in renowned galleries such as Projet CASA and ARMÜR, as well as in mural and fresco projects. His versatility led him to collaborate as art director on the film Dear Jackie, for which he also designed the poster. In 2024, he received a commission from the Gesù for a monumental work that will be exhibited until 2028. Félix asserts a transdisciplinary approach that questions the relationships between image, memory, and territory.
Candide Candace questions her connection to her culture of origin and her cultural hybridity, engaging in a search for personal harmony. The assembly—largely composed of steel, copper, wool, wood, and clay—as well as the use of the pedestal, considered an entity in its own right within her sculptures, allows her to open up through her works. She conceives of them as conversations, intimate encounters with the public.
Originally from Cameroon and Martinique respectively, Tania Doumbe Fines (1994) and Elodie Dérond (1998) founded ibiyanε in Montreal in 2020, a sculptural design studio now based in Martinique.
Ibiyanε’s creations exist at the intersection of the functional and the sublime, where they flourish as “builders of beauty” (a calling professed by Alioune Diop) and heralds of imaginaries. Grounded in repair, reuse, and respect, their ideology does not treat the local wood they shape as material to be dominated; rather, they recognize its own vocality, which they seek to sculpt in chorus.
Over five years of collective dreaming, Doumbe Fines and Dérond have developed a sincere rhythm of creative exchange, illustrated by the etymology of their shared name: ibiyanε comes from the Batanga word meaning “to know one another.” The poetic title of each of their creations, elombe, which translates as “conversation,” further emphasizes the dialogical nature of their work. For Doumbe Fines and Dérond, the definitions of ibiyanε and elombe serve as guiding markers in their shared commitment not only to invoke, but to embody, the meaning of these names.
Reggy St-Surin is an industrial designer based in Montreal. Driven by curiosity and storytelling, he explores the possibilities of creation across different media, never constrained by a particular style or material; he could have worked at McDonald’s, but he prefers crinkle-cut fries. This creative freedom allows him to bring a playful twist to outcomes that might otherwise seem predictable.
Tom Collection:
The Tom family is a collection of furniture pieces derived into soft, biomorphic sculptures. Composed of an ottoman, a chair, a bench, and a coat rack, the ensemble also represents the evolution of a character through each piece.
Bloc Stool:
The polyurethane foam used in the upholstery industry is generally produced by large manufacturers equipped with machinery capable of handling massive production. The Bloc stool is the result of experiments with this process at a drastically reduced scale.
Drawing from archives and memorabilia, Mpoka shapes spaces where the past dialogues with the present. Her work explores a nomadic condition of the “in-between,” where multiple temporalities and spatial discontinuities intertwine, bearing witness to a transoceanic heritage connecting Africa, Europe, and North America.
Extending trajectories marked by migration and rupture, her practice questions the links between cultural heritage, memory, lineage, and environmental colonialism. In response to fractures imposed by colonization, she develops a fluid approach in which real and imagined narratives intersect. The earth is considered a sensitive material, at the crossroads of historical trauma and the potential for identity recomposition.
Through photography, weaving, ceramics, dyeing, and installation, she develops multidisciplinary forms in which material, image, and narrative become vectors of circulation between places, connecting the geographies and memories that inhabit her.
With the support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Conseil des arts de Montréal, City of Montreal, Consulate General of France in Montreal, Productions Usawa, Canadian Heritage, Drouin Gagné, MNP, and Atwill-Morin.