Fabulous Committee & BLK D’OR
© Crédits photographiques : Babita Sharma et Renée Matthews, 2026.
Opening Reception and Performances with BLK D’OR
— Montreal Monochrome XI — TRANSIENT
BLK D’OR featuring Jahsun, Engone Endong, and Cabral Jacobs.
Wednesday, September 2, 2026, starting at 5:30 PM. Free and open to all.
Montreal Monochrome is an annual conference series for Indigenous, Black, and artists and cultural workers of color, organized by articule's Fabulous Committee. This 11th edition, which will take place from September 2-6, 2026, will expand to welcome guests from across Canada to explore our theme: TRANSIENT. Details about this edition of Montreal Monochrome and the full program.
To kick off this eleventh edition of Montréal Monochrome, we’ll begin with an opening announcement followed by a BLK D'OR concert featuring Jahsun, Cabral Jacobs & Endong Egone and refreshments. BLK D'OR is an exploration of free black expression that seeks new sounds, harmony, dissonance & authentic cultural exchanges.
Artists
Jahsun, is a Montreal, Canada based drummer. His music brings voice to ancestral memories, exploring free black expression while seeking new sounds, harmony, dissonance & authentic cultural exchanges. Jahsun is an artist/drummer who has been playing live concerts for over thirty-five years. He has toured internationally across Canada, India, China, Algeria, France, Germany, Cape Verde, the Caribbean & parts of the U.S. He began exploring musical genres in his youth with funk, punk-rock, reggae, soul and hip-hop.
Since 2003-2023, he has been founder and artistic director of the Kalmunity Vibe Collective, a premiere platform for black artistic expression, artist development & networking, based on improvised popular black musical genres. Comprising a group of over 100 artists, Kalmunity has produced 2 weekly event series: Kalmunity’s live organic Tuesday nights, collaborating with international/local musicians and poets creating a positive space for Black expression, original music and storytelling. In 2005-2020, the Kalmunity Jazz Project, a more intimate jazz-fusioned instrumental based,spontaneous composition series, collaborating with the city’s finest musicians. In addition, Jahsun is co-founder of the Kalmunity Music Week (2018 & 2019) Canada’s first Black arts week.
During the pandemic he co-founded a new creative jazz project, H ii Regions allowing him a freedom to abandon traditional ‘drummer’ timekeeping roles and focus on developing an extended vocabulary as an improviser within a creative musical idiom.
Engone Endong is a Montreal-based producer and composer working at the intersection of Gabonese traditions and cutting-edge electronic sound. His immersive and distinctive sonic language has brought him to the stage with the Orchestre Métropolitain, the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, as well as collaborations with artists including Pindi, Blitz the Ambassador, Waahli and Eccodek.
His album Okeng (UNLOG) received international recognition through platforms such as AFROPUNK and OkayAfrica. From Piknic Électronik and Pop Montréal to Gabonese stages and orchestral collaborations, Engone continues to blur the boundaries between traditional music, electronic production and contemporary creation.
In 2026, he continues this journey with PINDI and the NGWALI TOUR, while expanding his work across dance, theatre and film. He recently completed the original score for the upcoming film by Gabonese filmmaker Matamba Kombila. A highly anticipated new album is currently in the works.
Cabral Jacobs is a multi-instrumentalist and sound artist from the south shore of Montreal. Inspired by the trees, the sun, the rain, the wind and everything else within.
MMXI Schedule
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Opening Reception & Performance
— Starting at 5:30 PM: presented by BLK D’OR featuring Jahsun, Engone Endong, and Cabral Jacobs.
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.
Performance
— At 6:30 PM. Amanda Préval — What Remains…
Performance
— At 7 PM: Dani Carter — SWIRL/SADDLE.
Friday, September 4, 2026
Keynote Address
— At 5:30 PM: Keynote Address featuring Daniela Andrade & Fern — p(B)ajubá e a proteção de pessoas trans e travestis. In French but live translation to English will be available.
Performance
— At 7 PM: Joliz Dela Peña — Trespassing the Timeline
Saturday, September 5, 2026
Collective pottery patchwork II
— At 1:30 PM: With atelier clé (facilitated by Laura Leong and Kadidia Traore).
Performance-Workshop
— At 6 PM: Sabina Gámez Ibarra — Desire Paths
Sunday, September 6, 2026
Terms and Conditions: a workshop and discussion
— At 1:30 PM: a workshop and discussion presented by Collective Collective and Parker Mah
Clay Re:Gathered
— At 1:30 PM: : Hand-on workshop with Babita Sharma
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.