Festival Art Souterrain
Exhibition place
Activities
Darkness Before, 2023
Mixed installation: wood, sound
An immersive sculptural installation, Darkness Before is a curved wooden structure into which the public is invited to enter. This organic architecture imposes itself in the public space as an enveloping cocoon, protected from the world, which mitigates distractions.
The ambient obscurity blurs the perception of materials and the physical limits of space. Not presenting any image or narrative, the work is a sensory experience of suspended time. What we find inside is less an object than a condition shaped by the tightening of the environment around us: a rupture therefore interferes with our apprehension of time, presences and sound.
Darkness Before finally invites us to reflect on the possibility that forms of life, consciousness and meaning are ephemeral, while the space in which they arise seems immutable.
Biography
Hadi Jamali is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Intermedia Art (Video, Performance, and Electronic Arts) from Concordia University and studied Visual Communications at the Science and Culture University in Tehran. Jamali’s practice centers on constructing spatial and often interactive environments that shape how materials and narratives unfold through spatial thresholds, creating situations where perception and relation are subtly reconfigured. His work has been presented in solo and collaborative exhibitions across Canada, Europe, and Asia, including an exhibition at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto.
Special thanks to: This project was created in 2023 with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.