Summer Design Exhibitions – Passages Insolites In Québec City
We end this Summer Design Exhibitions series with an outdoor event celebrating an urban experience throughout the city of Québec, Canada.
Episode 8: ‘Passages Insolites: Embracing the Unusual’ in Québec City.
Until October 11th, the 8th edition of Passages Insolites offer a circuit of 20 unique and surprising street installations by artists from Québec and around the world.
Under the artistic direction of Vincent Roy, the 2021 urban experience transforms how we see the city and also creates unusual moments through novel approaches for Québec City including a larger number of boundary-pushing works, a Museum of Bad Art (MOBA), and stealth performing arts pop-ups sure to deliver unscripted off-kilter moments.
From ephemeral installations to unanticipated encounters, art is taking over the city on a street corner near you!
The main circuit
From Petit Champlain and Place Royale, through the Old Port, and on to Saint-Roch and Saint-Sauveur, a yellow line painted on the road will guide visitors along the 5 km circuit of singular artworks.
Intrigue, surprise, unexpected joys, and moments of poetry are the order of the day, as visitors enjoy 21 works that will make you see with fresh eyes. The participating artists and collectives have risen to the challenge with creativity, humour, and audacity, to make art take over the city and create a space of perpetual enchantment. The art walk is a perfectly safe activity that’s ideal for the whole family.
An interactive map of the circuit and a downloadable pdf are available online at passagesinsolites.com.
Public art showcases Quebec City heritage buildings
Exclusive to this year’s edition, works of public art will challenge how we see Québec City landmarks:
King of the Mountain (right), by Charles-Étienne Brochu, presented in front of the Québec Parliament Building.
ARENA by Benoît Maubrey, presented outdoors on the grounds of the Grand Théâtre de Québec.
Through the Walls by Collectif Tel quel, winner of the student competition held through our first collaboration with the Maison des métiers d’art de Québec, presented at the Citadelle of Québec.
In another exciting collaboration, historian José Doré has partnered with two collectives of emerging artists to provide detailed historical explanations of their exciting works:
Last Stop, by Collectif du Tropique, winner of the student competition organized in collaboration with the Art School of Université Laval, is a sculptural installation featuring reproductions of commercial signage that once enlivened the streets of the Saint-Roch district.
Delirious Québec (above), by the collective of the same name, winner of the student competition held in collaboration with the Université Laval architecture students’ association, is an architectural flight of fancy that reproduces and recombines many of Quebec City’s landmark buildings.
For the first time, the performing arts are part of the PASSAGES INSOLITES circuit
Like the artworks along the circuit, performing artists (dancers, circus artists, musicians, theatre artists, and multidisciplinary artists) are taking over the urban space to spark moments of magic in the Petit-Champlain, Place- Royale, and Old Port districts. This brand-new experience straddles the thin border between reality and imagination. Les embuscades – stealth performing arts pop-ups in public spaces conceived by EXMURO, in partnership with Théâtre Premier Acte and codirected by Marc Goudreau and Vincent Roy, will take place from July 14 to August 22, in collaboration with Théâtre Kata (theatre), Le CRue (dance), FLIP Fabrique (circus), L’orchestre d’hommes orchestres (multi-arts), and District 7 production (music).
Bringing the magic back to Espace 400e
This emblematic building designed for Quebec City’s 400th anniversary will welcome the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA), on tour from its Boston home for a first visit to Québec City. For a single summer, the building will be transformed into an ephemeral museum housing a unique collection of the very best bad art in the world, work simply “too bad to be ignored.” Visitors are sure to find that there is a unique pleasure in work whose intent is serious but whose execution fails lamentably. A stop at Espace 400e also gives visitors the opportunity to get information and maps of the circuit and peruse the gift shop.
An international event bringing in public art from around the world
International artists at PASSAGES INSOLITES this year:
Benedetto Bufalino (France): The Lawn Cars, in Petit-Champlain.
Benoît Maubrey (Germany): ARENA, an interactive sound work, part of the Grand Théâtre de Québec 50th anniversary programming.
Nicole Banowetz (USA): An Adaptive Moment in Bassin Louise
Mark Jenkins (USA): Untitled, characters scattered around the city
PASSAGES INSOLITES is focusing on women artists through our first-ever partnership with the OpenArt biennial of Örebro, Sweden, which has brought work by three Swedish collectives and artists: STYRELSEN FOR STÖR KONST, Ulrika Sparre, and Susanna Hesselberg. In 2022, three Quebec artists will complete the exchange by exhibiting at OpenArt.
The PASSAGES INSOLITES public art circuit has been presented and funded by the City of Québec and produced by EXMURO arts publics since 2014. The City awarded $325,000 in funding for project design and production. Of this total, $80,000 is provided through the Entente de développement culturel agreement between Québec’s provincial government and the Ville de Québec.
