TRANSIENT
© Photo Credits: Babita Sharma and Renée Mathews, 2026.
Montreal Monochrome 11th edition — TRANSIENT
Four days of conferences, performances, discussions, and more.
From Wednesday, September 2nd to Saturday, September 5, 2026.
Free and open to all.
Montréal Monochrome is an annual conference series for Indigenous, Black, and artists and cultural workers of color, organized by articule's Fabulous Committe.
This 11th edition, which will take place from September 2-5, 2026, will expand to welcome guests from across Canada to explore our theme: TRANSIENT.
The objective of Montreal Monochrome is to build new, long-lasting solidarity networks among BIPOC arts workers across the country and promote discussion and awareness of systemic racism in the arts milieu. The conference will be an opportunity to share organizing strategies for better labour conditions among BIPOC arts workers.
Current Schedule
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Opening Reception & Performances
— Starting at 5:30 PM.
Thursday, September 3, 2026
Threading Frequencies: Longtable discussion
— At 1:30 PM: Featuring artist-run centre leaders: Abedar Kamgari (SAVAC), Sanaa Humayun (Hamilton Artists Inc.), and Alana Traficante (Gallery 44), co-facilitated by researchers Madeline Collins and Suzanne Morrissette (OCAD University).
Open Discussion
— At 3 PM: Open Discussion, continuing on with the themes from the long table discussion all participants are invited to contribute to an open discussion.
Keynote Address
— At 5:30 PM. In English but live translation to French will be available.
Performances
— At 7 PM.
Friday, September 4, 2026
Terms and Conditions: a workshop and discussion
— Starting at 1:30 PM: Presented by Collective Collective and COco - Centre for Community Organizations
Keynote Address
— At 5:30 PM: Keynote Address featuring daniela andrade & fernando belote. In French but live translation to English will be available.
Performances
— At 7 PM.
Saturday, September 5, 2026
Workshops
— Starting at 2:30 PM: More details soon.
Three artists will present their installation works during Montréal Monochrome: Maya Amoah, Nathalie Batraville, and Anna J. McIntyre.
TRANSIENT
TRANSIENT refers to what circulates under pressure: diasporic bodies, minoritized languages, unstable archives, trans/queer and racialized practices that resist regimes of fixation, measurement, and categorization. Against colonial, institutional, and statistical logics that flatten difference into acronyms, metrics, or singular narratives, TRANSIENT foregrounds relational, embodied, and collective forms of knowledge. It creates a space where identity is understood as a process rather than a stable fact, where memory is activated through use and gesture, and where movement becomes a strategy for survival, care, and continual remaking.
TRANSIENT names a situated condition shaped by movement, constraint, and political timing. It is neither a temporary state nor mobility for its own sake, but a mode of existence formed in the in-between: between appearance and disappearance, inside and outside, visibility and erasure. Perhaps we all find ourselves there—in the liminal, fuzzy, and fluid—either momentarily or temporarily. What have we been doing in the interim.
Montreal Monochrome is an annual conference organized by articule's Fabulous Committee (anti-oppression). It addresses the misrepresentation and under-representation of Indigenous and racialized people in the current Montreal arts scene. The event aims to imagine and nurture new and existing connections, solidarities and friendships between Indigenous artists, thinkers, cultural workers and racialized allies. Artists, cultural workers, researchers, community organizers and others are invited to apply. The selected projects may take the form of workshops, round tables, debates, collective works, actions in the public space, interventions, performances, demonstrations, lightning gatherings, among others.
The Fabulous Committee is a space for Black, Indigenous and/or racialized articule members, as well as Black, Indigenous and/or racialized queer and/or trans members, to come together, to have a space to care for each other, to exchange ideas, to share their practice and to see art together. The activities of the Fabulous Committee change according to the needs and desires of the members.
This year’s edition of Montreal Monochrome is made possible, in part, by the Government of Canada, and by the support of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.
The Canadian Race Relations Foundation is committed to building a national framework for the fight against racism in Canadian society. The CRRF will do this through knowledge-sharing and community support in the pursuit of equity, fairness, social justice and systemic change.