© Anouk Verviers, We Gather at Dawn (I have discharged you from our care) (2024).
MOMENTA Biennale d’art contemporain — In Praise of the Missing Image
Guest curator: Marie-Ann Yemsi
Anouk Verviers
A community of bodies hosting migrating cells
From September 5 to October 25, 2025
Opening on September 5 at 5 pm
PRIM-Dazibao production-dissemination residency
Anouk Verviers’s exhibition presents the first two chapters of a dystopian trilogy that explores chronic pain as experienced by women and non-binary people. In the first video, performers erect a cob column that symbolizes their mutual support for one another as they collectively rewrite the story of their exhaustion. The second evokes four thousand years of history through a geological metaphor for endometriosis. Throughout the series, bodies dealing with pain merge with their treatment and transform into feminist cyborgs endowed with the power to act not only on their pain but, more importantly, with it.
Exhibition presented by MOMENTA Biennale d’art contemporain and produced in partnership with Dazibao.
In her interdisciplinary practice, Anouk Verviers investigates systems of power, asking how they affect bodies and shape entanglements between us, others, and the matter around us. She lives and works in London UK and Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. Her work has been shown at Kupfer (London), Galerie UQO (Gatineau), OPTICA (Montréal), and Dogo (Switzerland). She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal) and a Master of Fine Arts from Goldsmiths (London), where she was awarded the Acme Award for her thesis exhibition, as well as the Chelsea Arts Club Award. In 2024, she was awarded the Pauline-Desautels Prize. She is a member and the initiator of the Exhausted Feminist Hybrid Species reading group.
Dazibao thanks the artist and Momenta for their generous collaboration as well as its advisory committee for their support.
Dazibao receives financial support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the ministère de la Culture et des Communications and the Ville de Montréal.
Dazibao acknowledges that it is located on the unceded territory of the Kanien'kehá: ka Nation and that Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations, and today, is home to a diverse population of Indigenous as well as other peoples. Guided by ethics of respect, listening, and awareness, Dazibao commits to a continued reflection regarding the deep-rooted and systemic challenges tied to accessibility and inclusivity in the arts and beyond, and endeavors to apply such reflections to all aspects of its activities and governance.