Refuser le verdict

Curators: Martine Delvaux, Michèle Magema et Thérèse St-Gelais

Artists: Maria Friberg, Sophie Jodoin, Michèle Magema, Myriam Mihindou, Monique Régimbald-Zeiber, Carolyne Scenna, SMITH

Refuser le verdict means resisting the very notion of failure in order to reclaim imperfection, experimentation, and wandering. A work that fails—because it is unfinished, fragile, altered, or accidental—is a work in progress, an open-ended process that refuses to close off meaning. The resulting uncertainty then becomes a way of welcoming the unexpected, acknowledging the uncontrollable, and embracing imperfection. In this context, to fail is to reject the demands for stability and control that structure the dominant narratives of art, identity, and history. Failure reveals what is marginalized, what wavers, yet persists. Where hegemonic narratives impose models of success, failure opens fissures, where the undefined and the transitory become territories of affirmation, subversion, and resistance. This exhibition refuses to view failure as a verdict, choosing instead to see it as a force: a space of openness where possibilities are constantly replayed, and where art, by failing, reinvents itself.