Summer Window Exhibition
What Travels Through Us: Family History Workshops
SUMMER WINDOW EXHIBITION
Friday, July 4 to August 4, 2025 — Visible from our window on Plaza Saint-Hubert (on 6282, St-Hubert St.)
OPENING EVENTS
Friday, July 4 to August 4, 2025, from 4 PM to 9 PM, at articule.
Since Fall 2023, Super Boat People has been running the What Travels Through Us: Family History Workshops project, in collaboration with articule and Concordia University's Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. What Travels Through Us exhibition is the fruit of this project, which enabled a cohort of thirteen participants of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian origin, whose families had experienced war and refuge, to reappropriate their family history.
In ten sessions led by documentary filmmakers and artists from these communities, participants delved deeper into the journeys and experiences of their families and themselves. The exhibition brings together personal reflections, archives, artworks and objects created during this process. Join us for the opening of the exhibition on July 4 at articule, with the program, starting from 3 PM!
OPENING PROGRAM:
3:00 PM: Opening
4:00 PM: Screening of a selection of short films: Maybe in the Snow (2025) by Laurence Ly, La langue de ma mère (2022) by Jean-Baptiste Phou, Ocean Deep (2025) by Célin Do, followed by a Q&A session.
6:00 PM: Opening and presentation of works and exhibition by the group.
Until 9:00 PM: DJ set accompanied by food and drinks!
Super Boat People & their co-facilitators
Super Boat People is a collective whose mission is to inclusively mobilize of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese people of origin and alliance in Quebec to commit to reclaiming their histories, reconnecting with their culture and communities, ensuring that they are fairly represented, and defending and promoting the interests of immigrants and refugees. To this end, the collective develops and implements various initiatives, around history, literature, social mobilization, urban agriculture and cooking.
Super Boat People’s co-founders Rémy Chhem et Marie-Ève Samson are behind this project. Collaborators Eva-Loan Ponton-Pham and Naomi Frost have joined the team, helping to develop further and implement the project. Rémy and Eva-Loan act as co-facilitators of the workshops.
Rémy Chhem is a Cambodian-born social scientist specializing in governance and natural resource management in the Mekong region. In his spare time, Rémy works as a researcher and organizer for Asian communities in Montreal. He co-coordinated the Cambodian component of the Montreal Life Stories project in the early 2010s and has since organized various mediation projects focusing on community history, memory transmission and intergenerational relations. In 2021, he co-founded the Collectif Super Boat People, whose mission is to foster cultural reconnection and highlight the history and experiences of 'Indochinese' communities through a renewed perspective. Within Super Boat People, he is in charge of several initiatives related to history, food and horticultural culture.
Eva-Loan Ponton-Pham is a multidisciplinary artist with a degree in Art History & Visual Arts from Concordia University. In all her projects, whether as co-founder of Atelier La Coulée, member of the feminist publishing collective Les Bêtes d'hier or as a cultural mediator in various community projects, she is committed to putting forward voices that are too often marginalized, by focusing on personal and collective narratives that complicate dominant discourses. Of mixed Vietnamese and Canadian origin, her personal work deals with confluent identities and the complexities of cultural transmission in diasporic contexts. Her concerns are conceptualized and shaped primarily through the mediums of photography, fanzines, documentaries and sculpture.
Marie-Ève Samson is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the Université de Montréal and is of French-Canadian Quebecer origin. Her research interests focus on the experiences of ageing, end-of-life, accompaniment and care for immigrant elderly and their caregivers, in the context of transformations in Quebec's social protection and healthcare systems. Co-founder of Super Boat People, she was also involved in the Montreal Life Stories project in the early 2010s. Her thesis draws on these various commitments and focuses more specifically on the intergenerational issues in elder care among families of Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian origin in Montreal.
Artists
Caroline Bergoin
Jade Courtemanche
Christine Van Anh Luc
Saypraseuth Mounsaveng
Sophie-Kim Nguyễn
Michelle Thùy Uyên Nguyễn-Tạ
Flora Normant
Jimmy Minh Bằng Phạm
Serey Suon
Vudtha Tith
Julie Quỳnh Nhi Dương Trần
Jacqueline Ung
Cathy Wong
Maybe in the Snow by Laurence Ly
Experimental documentary | 5 min | Canada | 2025 |French, Khmer with English subs
A series of photos serving as family correspondences between Canada and Cambodia was shared with a swallow.
Laurence Ly
Of Cambodian and Vietnamese origin and based in Montreal, Laurence Ly is a director, producer, and screenwriter with a master's degree in Cinema and Moving Image from UQAM and a diploma in filmmaking from L'INIS. He directed Le petit panier à roulettes (2024), which won the award for best short film at several festivals (Les Percéides, Festival du cinéma international en Abitibi-Témiscamingue) and was a finalist for the Canadian Screen Awards for its actress's performance. As a producer, he launched the short film Platanero (2025) at the Sundance and Regard festivals. He is also curator and programmer for the film section of the Festival Accès Asie.
My mother’s tongue by Jean-Baptiste Phou
Experimental Documentary | 34 min | Cambodia | 2022 | French & Khmer with english & khmer subtitles
My mother’s tongue tells the story of a mother and son who do not really share a common language and struggle to communicate. She was born in Cambodia and he in France. He tries to establish a complicated dialogue with her before giving up, until she falls seriously ill.
Jean-Baptiste Phou
Jean-Baptiste Phou is a French-Cambodian author, director, and multidisciplinary artist. His work explores themes of identity, uprooting, the consequences of the Khmer Rouge genocide, and the experiences of minority groups. In 2021, he returned to creation and explored new mediums. He produced two sound works in 2021, La couleur du désir (The Color of Desire) and La Langue de ma mère (My Mother's Language). Turning to the visual arts, he exhibits solo or in collaboration with other artists: À un fil (video, installation, and performance) and En morceaux (photography) are part of the 2022 edition of the Photo Phnom Penh Festival, and Murmures (interactive installation) will be featured at the French Institute of Cambodia in 2023. He is also the author of 80 mots du Cambodge (L’Asiathèque, 2023) and La Peau hors du placard (Le Seuil, 2024).
Célin Do
Célin is the Director, Executive Producer, Editor, Cameraman, Animator, and Songwriter of CRAZY BROKE ASIAN, a 6-episode, 30-minute coming-of-age docuseries blending live-action and animation, over 10 years in the making.
Ocean Deep by Célin Do
Video Clip | 5 min | Canada | 2025 | Vietnamese and English with subtitles
Célin is a closeted, depressed and failed med-student struggling with severe ADHD. But upon meeting “the Love of their Life,” they find the courage to move out of their traditional Vietnamese household and become a “world-class artist” in hopes of gaining their parents’ approval. In parallel, they film the entire journey to make an “autobiographical documentary”… without really knowing what the f*** they are doing.
In partnership with Super Boat People, Concordia University's Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS) and the Centre d'histoire de Montréal (MEM). This project has also been made possible thanks to the financial support of the Government of Quebec and the City of Montreal, as part of the Entente de développement culturel de Montréal.
