Whispers of the Invisible
Presented by Mois Multi
Co-curated by Christian Lapointe (Mois Multi, Quebec), Seungah Lee (Urban Art Lab, Seoul) and Vincent Roy (EXMURO, Quebec) and presented as part of the 27th edition of the Mois Multi international festival of multidisciplinary and electronic arts.
In a world dominated by the visible, what remains unnoticed? Whispers of the Invisible delves into the forgotten, the fleeting, and the intangible—memories erased, sensations overlooked, and hidden connections that quietly shape our everyday lives. Bringing together artists from Quebec, the United States, France and Korea, the exhibition draws attention to the gaps, silences, and blind spots in perception, and asks how contemporary art might illuminate what lies beneath the surface of the senses.
With works by Jean-François Côté (Quebec), Mathieu Valade (Quebec), Pierre&Marie (Quebec), Lee Yongbaek, and Kira Kim (Republic of Korea), Maxime Corbeil-Perron (Quebec), Matthew Biederman (Chicago) and Lucas Paris (France).
From January 31 to April 6, 2026
Aire publique EXMURO, Place Royale, Québec
JEAN-FRANÇOIS CÔTÉ (QUÉBEC)
Through immersive installations, Jean-François Côté engages in a conceptual, poetic, and critical exploration of image, sound, narrativity, and environment—examined through the lens of digital and ecological transitions. Confronting the omnipresence of mass media, he reimagines images as sensitive spaces to inhabit.
His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions across Canada, Mexico, Chile, Croatia, Greece, and China. A professor at the Université du Québec in Trois-Rivières, he is also cofounder of SYMBIOSE, an interdisciplinary laboratory dedicated to art, technology, and the environment. Côté is also active in the field of permanent public art.
INVISIBLE STORIES
Invisible Stories by Jean-François côté offers an immersive, multisensory environment where each viewer is invited to compose their own narratives and navigate a layered constellation of temporalities. Situated at the intersection of video installation and soundscape, the work unfolds through a complex system of multi-channel projections and audio streams, generating trajectories that are continuously evolving and being reimagined. Rhythms overlap—slowness, acceleration, suspension—echoing the pulse of natural cycles and the breath of the world. Fragments of lives cross paths, brush against one another, and resonate, weaving a delicate poetics of place, movement, and memory.
At its core, the installation explores the notion of the border—not as a fixed boundary, but as a zone of friction, transition, and exchange. Invisible Stories questions the role of human presence within a world in flux, and evokes the ephemeral or enduring traces left by our passage through landscape and time.
MATHIEU VALADE (QUÉBEC)
Mathieu Valade’s art practice navigates the interplay between geometry, perception, and media. He constructs sculptural video installations and optical artworks that deconstruct the screen’s influence, employing repetition, reflection, and spatial fragmentation. His work exposes artifice, creates perceptual loops, and challenges viewers to slow down, observe, and rethink visual certainty.
Mathieu Valade is a Canadian artist whose work has been presented in museums, galleries, and artist-run centres across Canada, France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Greece, the United States, and Sweden. His work is part of several institutional collections, and he has produced numerous permanent and temporary public art installations.
THE SKY AND WATER
The Sky and Water by Mathieu Valade is a video installation featuring a sequence of vertically mounted televisions, tilted away from the wall and overlapping like pages of a half-open book. Each screen plays the same misty tracking shot across a lake, where sky, water, and the hazy silhouette of an island gradually emerge. Together, the screens form a fragmented yet unified image, inviting viewers to navigate both illusion and perception.
This artwork made possible thanks to financial support from the CALQ.
POST-POST-MODERNISME
This video projection unfolds as a montage in which emblematic buildings drawn from various movements in the history of art and architecture gradually transform under the influence of natural forces and the passage of time. Modernist structures, classical monuments, and utopian forms appear to dissolve, ignite, or fragment, giving rise to unstable, shifting landscapes. The images—marked by an unsettling beauty—were generated using artificial intelligence, employed here as a speculative medium.
This artwork was co-produced in part by Grand Théâtre de Québec.
The sky and water
PIERRE&MARIE (QUÉBEC)
Pierre&Marie is the collaborative duo of Pierre Brassard and Marie-Pier Lebeau Lavoie, active since 2008 and based in Quebec City, Canada. Their work playfully reinterprets symbols of popular culture to reveal the absurdity and poetry of contemporary life.
Blending wonder and gentle resistance, their practice engages with pressing social issues.
The duo has presented over thirty exhibitions across Canada, France, and Taiwan, in museums, artist-run centres, and galleries. Their work is held in numerous public, private, and institutional collections, and they have received several awards and distinctions in recognition of their artistic contribution in Quebec.
BIG OTHER – DISCIPLINARY SOCIETIES
Big Other – Disciplinary Societies integrates animated eyes on the architectural façade of EXMURO’s Aire publique. With their twitchy, staccato movements on circular LED screens, they appear to track passersby on Place Royale. The work transforms the building into an active observer, inviting both delight and reflection on surveillance and control.
Drawing on a visual language inspired by familiar emojis, Big Other subtly raises questions about data collection and the governance of digital environments. Suggesting a protective gaze as much as a watchful one, these glowing eyes illuminate the street and prompt us to consider the delicate balance between safety and unease, care and surveillance.
LEE YONGBAEK (Republic of Korea)
Lee Yongbeak has gained international recognition for his thought-provoking and innovative use of technology and media to reflect contemporary imagination and explore themes of beauty, violence and perception. He navigates various technologies from single-channel video to interactive art, sound art, kinetic art, and robotics to visualize stories about the human psyche, along with socio-political issues.
Born in Gimpo, Korea, Lee Yongbaek graduated from the Hoingik University in Korea and the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design in Germany. He was selected for the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011 and has participated in the Moscow Biennale, the Busan Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, and the Nanjing International Art Festival.
ANGEL SOLDIER
Angel Soldier by Lee Yongbaek is a haunting video installation that juxtaposes the delicate beauty of floral patterns with the stark reality of war. Set against a printed backdrop of colorful artificial flowers, six soldiers don uniforms made from the same floral fabric, transforming the scene into a surreal flower field. At first glance, the video appears to depict a serene, static landscape accompanied by the gentle sounds of nature. Yet, as the viewer’s eye lingers, the illusion unravels: blossoms subtly shift, revealing the camouflaged soldiers slowly creeping forward, their barely perceptible movements evoking an unsettling tension.
Through this interplay of aesthetic beauty and concealed militarism, the work challenges perceptions of surface appearances, inviting reflection on identity, conflict, and the seductive artifice of contemporary society. The contrasting figures of angel and soldier, nature and violence, coexist in a space of simulacre that is at once visually alluring and disturbingly unfamiliar, leaving a lingering sense of unease.
KIRA KIM (REPULIC OF KOREA)
Kira Kim’s multimedia practice humorously yet incisively critiques capitalist power structures and the false ideals they project. Drawing from personal experience, he deconstructs dominant narratives, amplifies marginalized voices, and probes social and psychological tensions, inviting viewers to confront uncomfortable truths embedded in contemporary Korean society and global capitalism.
Born in Dacheon, Korea, Kira Kim holds an MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London. He has participated in international biennials in Gwangju, Busan, and Liverpool, and taken part in exhibitions at renowned institutions such as the National Art Museum of China. He was a finalist for the Korea Artist Prize and won the Korean Art Critics Association Artist Award.
BLIND MAN: DIFFERENT WAY
On a stage swallowed by darkness, a violent struggle unfolds in slow motion. Three figures appear locked in a desperate, every-person-for-themselves battle, clawing and shoving to lift themselves above the others. Their silent screams dissolve into a piercing soundscape that amplifies the rising tension. As the camera draws back, more bodies emerge: five figures in total, all precariously supported by a single man who sways beneath their collective weight yet refuses to collapse.
This chaotic physicality becomes a searing metaphor for the individualistic competitive drive shaped by contemporary capitalism. Kira Kim exposes the paradox of a hierarchical system in which the survival of some rests on the oppression of others, highlighting the fragility of the ideologies that structure our lives. Blind Man: Different Way probes the human condition today, revealing how collective systems shape our relationships, behaviours, and responsibilities toward one another.
Maxime Corbeil-Perron (QUÉBEC)
Maxime Corbeil-Perron is an artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal whose practice spans a broad range of media, including audiovisual performance, experimental cinema, electroacoustic composition, improvisation, sound art, and installation.
As a filmmaker, he has received awards and distinctions from major international festivals and institutions such as the Ann Arbor Film Festival (United States), Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma, Vienna Shorts (Austria), Prix Ars Electronica (Austria), and the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma de Montréal.
PERMUTATIONS
Permutations is a light and sound installation composed of a trio of 16 mm projectors augmented by an artisanal system for the control and distortion of light. The work emerges from an archaeomedia research practice that investigates the relationships between obsolete technologies and contemporary systems, reactivating historical media in order to reveal new aesthetic potentials.
Coproduced by Recto-Verso in collaboration with Werktank.
Matthew Biederman (CHICAGO) et Lucas Paris (FRANCE)
Matthew Biederman is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice has, since the 1990s, investigated perception, data, and media systems through installation, performance, and video. His work has been presented at major international biennials and festivals and is included in public and private collections throughout North America.
Lucas Paris is an artist working in real time with sound and image, developing digital instruments and custom software for over a decade. His research, situated within audiovisual performance, centers on immersive modes of audience engagement, combining multisensory content with emotionally driven scenographic environments.
Situational compliance
Situational Compliance is an interactive audiovisual installation that reappropriates the children’s game “Simon Says” to examine, with humor and critical precision, the mechanisms of public surveillance. Drawing on artificial intelligence and computer vision, the work orchestrates a system that observes, interprets, and directs the actions of its participants, making visible the power dynamics embedded within contemporary digital environments.
Coproduced by Recto-Verso in collaboration with MUTEK MTL.
EXMURO public art thank to the Museum of Civilization for its valuable support for this exhibition.
