Carl-Phillipe Simonise/Po B. K. Lomami/Valérie Bah

If it weren’t for personal family archives, one would assume that Black folks have only recently landed on Turtle Island. Afro-descendants have been systematically erased from “official” archives through years of deliberate visual segregation and lack of representation.

“Montreal, 1985” is a project consisting of a speculative photo series, “chosen fam” photo album, and process-oriented zine The series tells the story of Black presence and resistance to systemic visual apartheid, in a city so proud of its cultural “diversity”.

Using speculative fiction and staging personal archives, this project attempts to fill in a gap left by the systemic erasure of Afro-descendants from Montreal-tio'tia:ke’s visual landscape, while casting Black folks in opposition to the white settler colonial project.

The story centers around a fictional crew of Black queer-identified students, artists, and activists who gather on a winter’s night to enjoy each other’s company. Someone mentions a controversial news story that ignites political tensions, strong words, and avoidance within the group. A surge of bad blood and bickering jeopardizes the gathering. Their evening takes them from their living room to the dance floor of Balattou, a long-established Black space.  Will they find release?

Our creation process mirrored the narrative we crafted: Ideological disagreements within the context of intimacies and a joint cause. In other words, Black love and liberation through conflict and emotional resilience. Our process and conversations on representation, questions of historical “accuracy”, ethics, etc., are captures in a zine that challenges the convention of art catalogues.

This project was created within the Critical Creations Residency