Centre SAGAMIE and artch - art contemporain émergent are pleased to present the second exhibition of the Plein solo project, showcasing the very first solo exhibition by Cristel Silva. Titled Transmutations of Becoming with Each Other, the exhibition will be on view from April 24 to June 27, 2025, at Centre SAGAMIE, where the artist completed her creative residency.
Join us in celebrating the exhibition’s grand opening at the vernissage on April 24, 2025, from 5 to 7 PM. This event, which is open to everyone, will be the perfect opportunity to meet and chat with other art lovers.
Beyond urban planning and its functional limitations, how do we intimately inhabit our cities—and how do they, in turn, inhabit us?
American author and activist Jane Jacobs writes: “In modern cities, we have forgotten that sidewalks and parks are more than just spaces: they are living rooms and ecological corridors for communities.”¹ To rekindle this promising vision, it is essential to pay attention to places that escape the rigid structures of urban planning. These liminal spaces—railways, abandoned wastelands—become fertile ground where dynamic, chaotic, and surprising interactions emerge between humans and non-humans, signaling a thriving ecosystem. It is these environments, fundamental to her relationship with urbanity, that Cristel Silva explores in her latest body of work, presented in Transmutations of Becoming with Each Other.
To engage with these reflections, Cristel Silva incorporates the practice of drifting into her methodology, inspired by Guy Debord and the Situationists. Avoiding predetermined routes, she roams the city freely, shaping her path in response to the intuitions of the terrain. These wanderings serve as a pretext for close observation, allowing her to connect intimately with the stories and sensibilities that subtly weave through the urban environment.
During her drifts, she collects fragments of the urban landscape: discarded tarps, plastic bags, images of fences overtaken by roots. These traces are integrated into the quilts she creates, making each piece a testament to chance encounters. Stitch by stitch, the assemblage forms a sensitive cartography of the places Cristel explores, revealing the vitality of these in-between spaces and non-places.
In this exhibition, Cristel Silva unfolds a rich reflection that intertwines the intimate and the political, exploring how narratives and struggles have the power to transform urban landscapes and shape new ways of inhabiting our cities.
1 Jacobs, Jane (2012). The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
- Andy Maple, artist and collaborator
Cristel Silva explores stories, both historical and personal, through photography, textile, and printingtechniques. Using archival images, found objects, and samples collected from unoccupied spaces inTiohtià:ke (Montréal), she aims to reveal the native natural life of these environments and question the socio-political forces that shape them. With an approach rooted in autofiction, she creates visual narrations thatwarp the borders between intimate and communal. Her works critique our urban environment and itsunderlying power dynamics, while at the same time celebrating the resilience and wealth of local urbanhistories.
