La Biennale de Montréal — The Grand Balcony

Nathalie Melikian

From October 20, 2016 to January 14, 2017
Opening on October 20 at 8:30 pm

La Biennale de Montréal and Dazibao present the work of Nathalie Melikian in the context of BNLMTL 2016 — The Grand Balcony.

Curator: Philippe Pirotte

Le Grand Balcon draws loosely on Jean Genet’s Le Balcon, in which the play’s high porch is a space of contestation between revolution and counter-revolution, reality and illusion. A recurring motif in Genet’s writing, his balcony is a place where representation itself can be perversely troubled.

Nathalie Melikian lives and works in Vancouver and Malmö (Sweden). Since the late 1990s, she has been creating videos in which she calls into question and analyses the narrative structures of various film genres. Her work has been exhibited at Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (Belgium), Malmö Konstmuseum (Sweden), Frankfurter Kunstverein (Germany), Centre pour l’image contemporaine – Saint-Gervais Genève (Switzerland), VOX (Montreal), Justina Barnicke Gallery – University of Toronto, Fridericianum (Kassel), Vancouver Art Gallery, Centro José Guerrero (Granada), MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo (Spain), Museum of Contemporary Art, (Oslo) and The Bergen Art Museum (Norway). Her works feature in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Malmö Art Museum and the Vancouver Art Gallery. 

The Last Man on Earth is the story of the one that was forgotten on earth as all of humanity was migrating to another planet. In desperation of ever being rescued, the man resigns to his loneliness, until someone knocks at his door.

This film by Nathalie Melikian is being premiered at Dazibao during the BLNMTL 2016 – The Grand Balcony.