What does “home” mean to you? 

Is it a person? Where you have lived for decades? Where you were born? 

And what if home was something you could not return to, but carry with you always? 

Such is the sentiment of Yasmeen, “Yas” Kanaan’s most recent exhibition, Carrying Home. Through her art, Kanaan recounted a beautiful story of belonging, the passing down of culture, and resistance. She derives stylistic inspiration from renowned Palestinian artists like the late Ismail Shammout and Sliman Mansour.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness. 

The Daily spoke to Kanaan about her exhibition’s theme: “For me, art is a form of culture. And culture is a form of preserving identity, and preserving identity is a form of resistance against oppression. So basically, art is my tool and that’s how I chose the theme for this exhibition.” 

Kanaan is a Palestinian artist with a bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from the University of Jordan and a master’s degree in Art History from Concordia University. From a very early age, she learned to conceptualize and express her feelings on a canvas. She admired artists like Palestinian political cartoonist, Naji al Ali, best known for his famous caricature Handalah; Kanaan’s patriotism for Palestine drew the attention of her high school teacher. 

“When I was very young, my passion used to come out as anger, and frustration,” she says. “And then I had a teacher, a genuinely good teacher, the type that changes your life, who told me that passion without direction is kind of useless. He taught me how to turn my passion into an educational tool, into something useful for society. And that’s when I unlocked, and started thinking how can art be used as a way to tell a story?” 

After graduating from Concordia University, Kanaan worked as an art historian for six years before applying herself to painting again. 

“Being an art historian and art curator takes me down a different path, and gives me a different perspective on the arts than being an artist,” she says. [But] “ I still have so much to offer as an artist. So I chose to go back to it. And the first painting that I did is the watermelon piece.” 

Long live the Watermelon (2025) is one of the pieces featured in Carrying Home. It shows two watermelons, one cut up in 3 different pieces, ready to be served, and another ripe for the taking, with a beautiful background showcasing embroidery patterns that are anything but random. These patterns are inspired by Kanaan’s mother’s Palestinian embroidery designs, called tatreez, which was the artist’s first love. It was her way of incorporating the importance of passing down heritage and culture, as well as preserving memory – the core themes of her exhibition. 

“My heritage and my art were never separated,” she says. “That’s kind of my automatic identity. 
Every single element in my pieces is part of my everyday life. Even the embroidery pieces, they’re reminiscent of my mother’s jacket that I wear.” Another example Kanaan cites is the frame piece, which she calls “the most important art piece in the exhibit.” “There’s nothing inside it, and it’s over like 60 years old and lived through different exiles from different cities. It was with my family during the Naksa, [also known as the Six Days War of 1967, and] now in Montreal. So, this is part of my identity. It’s carrying home.”  

The theme was also heavily inspired by Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani’s novel, Return to Haifa, which dealt with questions centering around the idea and definition of home. 

“What is home?” Kanaan asks. “Is it the table that’s been there for so many years that became part of the furniture of the house? Is it the language? What is the concept of a home? What is [its definition]? The answer in the book is ‘the will.’ It had an impact on me because I’m also a traveller. Wherever I go, I have my baggage, my home is my bag…It’s no longer a physical place. It’s a collection of traditions, values, recipes, clothing and embroidery, altogether in a bag.”

To be featured in the 11th edition of Montreal’s Filministes Festival was very significant to Kanaan. 

The Filministes Festival is an annual film festival organizing discussions on contemporary feminist issues in Montreal through the screening of cinematographic works, which began in 2015. The festival promotes films and directors from here and abroad, while creating spaces for discussion and reflection for audiences of all kinds. Ultimately, its specificity lies in bridging feminism and cinema.

“This feminist festival is really going for it, and is supportive of otherwise controversial topics,” Kanaan says, “especially in the current context and political climate, where there’s so much anti-immigrant hate. There’s currently a lot of people and policies fueling hate against Arabs [and] Muslims. But the people that I worked with at the festival are very supportive, alhamdulillah.”

“I feel like a lot of feminists like to carry the idea of feminism without actually incorporating the values,” Kanaan continues. “It’s become like a commercial motto for a lot of women because it doesn’t make sense for someone to be a feminist and not take into account causes like the genocide in Sudan, or in Palestine, yet defend someone like Taylor Swift. When it comes to justice, they forget all about feminism. For me, it’s very feminist of me to choose the topic of Palestinian identity as a woman. And even if I wasn’t a woman. I think the cause of Palestine should be directly affiliated with feminism.” 

The Festival Filministes opened its doors from March 4 to March 14, with Carrying Home available for viewing from opening night to March 9. 

For any and all future exhibitions by Yas Kanaan, you can follow her Instagram page for updates. 

The post Carrying Home everywhere she goes appeared first on The McGill Daily.

It was a deliberate reframing of what “America” can mean, delivered on one of the few stages left that still pretends to speak for everyone at once. That’s why the “Benito Bowl,” the fan nickname that spread almost as quickly as the clips themselves, became inescapable this past week. People weren’t only reacting to the performance; they were reacting to what it symbolized, and the people who got to be centred on his own terms: linguistically, culturally, and politically.

Bad Bunny’s rise to stardom make that centering feel especially pointed. He didn’t arrive in North America as a “crossover” project. He arrived as a Puerto Rican artist whose work has always proudly uplifted Puerto Rico and its unique culture. Puerto Rico’s political status makes visibility complicated on contact, as the country is not a sovereign state, but a US territory. Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but residents of the island cannot vote for president and do not elect voting members of Congress.

When halftime stopped being background noise

The Super Bowl halftime show usually aims for one thing above all: broad agreement. Even when viewers complain, the show is built to feel familiar and contain recognizable hits, universal cues, and minimal risk. Bad Bunny’s set didn’t play that game. It made Spanish the default language, Puerto Rico the centre, and “America” the hemisphere rather than the brand name. That shift alone explains a lot of the reaction cycle: celebration from viewers who felt seen, and backlash from viewers who felt the centre move without their permission.

One detail made the performance feel less like a medley and more like a statement. During the set, a couple was married on the field, and multiple outlets later confirmed it was a real, legally binding wedding. In a broadcast built around scripted spectacle, that choice landed as intimate and political at the same time: a reminder that legitimacy, belonging, and who gets to be “official” are arguments happening in public life right now, not just in comment sections.

This is what turns a halftime show into a cultural event, not just the fact that “people had opinions,” but the reasons they had them.

Puerto Rico isn’t an aesthetic, it’s the context

Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rican upbringing isn’t a footnote, it’s the core of his public identity. References in the halftime show weren’t random decorations; they were modes of insisting Puerto Rico’s belonging at the centre of the story, not on the margins.

What looked like set dressing was actually a kind of geography lesson, not the textbook kind, but the kind you feel. The show unfolded like a moving “tour” through Puerto Rican life: from a sugar cane field to a casita, then into the streets of San Juan, with domino players, block-party energy, and even a piragua (shaved ice) vendor stitched into the visuals.

That choice matters right now because it insists on ordinary Puerto Rican life; not Puerto Rico as a vacation backdrop, a headline, or an American afterthought. Sugar cane hints at the island’s extractive histories and the economic story behind “paradise”; the casita reads as continuity and home in an era shaped by debt crises, austerity politics, and displacement pressures; and the street scenes refuse the idea that Latin identity has to arrive on US television in a simplified, export-ready form.

Even the smaller gestures were calibrated. The light-blue Puerto Rican flag signalled a political lineage many viewers recognized immediately, and “seguimos aquí” (“we’re still here”) landed like a compact slogan of survival. When he spiked a football stamped “Together, We Are America,” the Super Bowl’s most patriotic object became an argument about what “America” includes and who gets to claim it. It was capped off by a billboard that read, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” alongside an “Easter egg” cameo that quietly nodded to diaspora memory.

That insistence carries weight because Puerto Rico’s relationship to the United States continues to be politically unresolved. As a US territory, Puerto Rico is tied to US power while lacking equal federal political representation. So when Puerto Rico is centred on the most symbolic US stage, a broadcast typically soaked in national mythology, it can’t help but read as political. Representation becomes less
“visibility” and more “reckoning”: a reminder of who is included, how, and at what cost.

In other words, the controversy isn’t that Bad Bunny “made it political.” It’s that Puerto Rico’s position already is, and has always been, and the Super Bowl simply doesn’t usually invite viewers to sit with that.

A halftime show built to be read

You don’t have to treat the halftime show like a puzzle to recognize it was built to be read. It’s a choice about audience: who is assumed to understand without effort, and who is expected to lean in.

Taken together, these choices make the halftime show feel like something greater than entertainment. They render it a cultural message delivered in the language of Bad Bunny’s characteristic effusive Latin trap: spectacle, symbolism, and the kind of visibility that becomes disruptive simply by refusing to shrink.

Resistance, in plain sight

The temptation with any “art as resistance” story is to hunt for one definitive political message and call it a day. However, Bad Bunny’s version of resistance is often quieter, and, in some ways, harder for a mainstream audience to dismiss. It’s not only what he says, it’s what he refuses to dilute. He made that refusal explicit at another high-profile event before the Super Bowl. At the 2026 Grammys, Bad Bunny used his acceptance speech for Best Música Urbana Album (for Debí Tirar Más Fotos) to denounce ICE and call for an end to what one report described as an “ongoing immigration crackdown,” punctuating it with the slogan “ICE out.”

That’s not symbolism, but a clear alignment with migrants and immigrant communities at a moment when immigration enforcement has become a flashpoint in US public life. And it sits alongside a different kind of milestone from the same night: Debí Tirar Más Fotos also won Album of the Year, marking the first time a Spanish-language album took the Grammys’ top prize.

The resistance here isn’t just “a pop star being political.” It’s a global superstar insisting that Spanish, Puerto Rico (and Latin America at large), and immigrant life aren’t side stories, even in the most mainstream room.

Backlash, then the rumour mill

Backlash was predictable. A Spanish-heavy halftime show on the Super Bowl stage, and a Puerto Rican artist refusing to soften his message, was always going to trigger the usual reactions: “keep politics out of it,” “speak English,” “this isn’t for you,” and the more familiar accusation hiding under all of that: you don’t belong here.

But the backlash didn’t stay in the realm of taste. It moved into the realm of narrative-making, constructed through the spreading of misinformation. In early February, social media users claimed Bad Bunny wore a bulletproof vest to the Grammys because of threats tied to xenophobic hostility. The rumour was investigated and no evidence was found for the “bulletproof vest” claim, explaining that his sharply tailored outfit (and altered silhouette) fuelled speculation.

The point isn’t just that “people online lie.” The rumour frames Latino visibility as inherently dangerous and controversial, transforming a historic career moment into a security conspiracy. This converts prejudice into something resembling concern. It also shifts the conversation away from the actual stakes of Bad Bunny’s work, language, belonging and power, toward whether he’s “too political” to be safe.

In that sense, the rumour becomes part of the cultural reaction: a way of policing what kinds of artists are allowed to be visible, and on what terms.

Why this lands in Montreal too

From Montreal, it’s easy to treat US culture battles as exported noise: loud, constant, and somehow always trending. But the themes that surfaced around Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl and Grammys moments are not uniquely American. They travel and translate because they interrogate fundamental questions: who gets treated as “normal,” what language gets to be default, and who has to translate themselves to be heard.

Those questions land differently in Quebec, where language is never just language, but identity, law, power, and a recurring public argument. This is a city shaped by diaspora, where belonging is lived rather than theoretical.

Bad Bunny’s journey, from a Puerto Rican artist building momentum on his own terms to winning the prestigious Album of the Year at the Grammys and headlining a Spanish-forward Super Bowl halftime show, matters because it shows what art can do when it refuses to stay in its lane. It may not be able to rewrite policy or put an end to structural abuses. But it can shift the centre of the frame, force a mainstream audience to notice what it usually treats as peripheral, and remind people that “unity” without inclusion is just branding.

And maybe that’s the most useful way to read the “Benito Bowl”: not as a victory lap, not as a controversy, but as a moment where pop culture briefly stopped pretending that belonging is uncomplicated.

The post Bad Bunny: Resistance Through Art appeared first on The McGill Daily.

After a long awaited two-year hiatus, the McGill Savoy Society has made its grand return to the Moyse Hall Theatre, performing Patience; or, Bunthorne’s Bride. With a company of over 60 performers, musicians and technical creatives, the irreverent 1881 comic opera is given new life and reads as strikingly relevant today as ever — underscoring that Patience makes perfect in this romantic absurd comedy, opening February 13 to a wonderfully-timed Valentine’s Day weekend.

The piece recounts the evergreen plot structure of a love triangle between simple milkmaid Patience and the two superficial, artistically minded muses — Bunthorne and Grosvenor — who pine after her. A bitter satire on the Aesthetic Movement that was sweeping Europe at the time. Championed most famously by Oscar Wilde, the movement was a reaction to the moralism of art at the time, expressing the idea that art had inherent value even as superficial beauty, independent of social, political or ethical significance. The piece takes on newfound meaning with the rise of the performative male archetype, asking audiences to reinvestigate the timelessness of man falling victim to his own follies. For Artistic Director Michael Quinsey, “[Patience] is more than just about the Aesthetic Movement, it’s about fad chasing. It’s about pretense which is very human.”

Nathaniel Jablonski, who plays Patience’s childhood love interest Grosvenor, expands on this idea by talking about the way modern masculinity responds flexibly to affirm the status quo of the time: “The ideas of masculinity are constantly in flux — the traditional masculinity of military men are played for laughs as uncultured, contrasted with the nouveau of masculinity which is artistic, dreamy, sensitive and literary.”

He highlights that much of the commentary presented in Patience is represented through genderplay and how the modern man adjusts his performance of masculinity in favour of reaffirming the status quo. He adds that many operas like Patience play with the weight of navigating a hostile world where “very strict social codes are taken to the extreme bitter end,” often to absurd theatrical consequence. “People act completely nonsensically, they’re trying to make sense of the world. They’re trying to survive their lives under these codes and that’s part of the humour. How absurd it is that love must be considered either unselfish or selfish to be considered real,” Jablonski reflects.

Ana Neocleous, music director, speaks to the enduring relevance of Gilbert and Sullivan today. In particular Neocleous focuses on the unique space comic opera occupies in the public imagination which makes it especially equipped to tackle the subject of affect: “People have more preconceived notions on opera than many other performing art forms. These miscomprehensions came from the 19th century and are bound up in the serious work environment realized under a maestro conductor. It’s super high art! […] [Opera] has taken so many different forms from intellectual art to low-brow comedy, Gilbert and Sullivan is an artifact more accessible than most people think. There’s nothing high art about this, and there’s something nice about embracing it for what it is. The operas of Gilbert and Sullivan provide this unique opportunity to revisit that and play around.”

Though Bunthorne and Grosvenor carry much of the comedy in this piece, Patience, played by Helayna Moll, is the play’s emotional and philosophical anchor, serving as the voice of reason. Speaking to Patience’s fixation on moral love, Moll says, “She is obsessed with morality: when her friend Lady Angela ‘says you have to love, it is your duty to love and it must be unselfish,’ she believes her. It reflect the beliefs of the time and the demands placed on women.”

In her recharacterization, Moll sought to re-engage Patience as a character that approaches the institution of love with skepticism: “[Patience is] treated as this dumb blonde, but she really achieves everything she wants withou compromising on her beliefs. I believe she is really smart.” She points in particular to Patience’s Act Two Aria, “Love is a Plaintive Song,” noting that she approached this moment as a turning point, questioning why she is expected to appear happy when as the lyric suggests, it is “everything for him, nothing at all for her.”

Though the male lead Bunthorne acts as a caricature of an amalgamation of Aesthetic Movement figureheads, it is Oscar Wilde that Patience is most often culturally identified with. Depicted alongside Wilde in satirical magazines is the lily which becomes a prominent symbol throughout the opera. As pointed out by Professor Maggie Kilgour in the program’s “Note on Aestheticism,” the lilies reference the Matthew 6:28-29 of the New Testament wherein “Christ praises the flower for its beautiful uselessness: ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’” Though the Aesthetic Movement’s rise was attributed heavily to Wilde’s contributions, it was also his trial for indecency that suffocated much of the movement’s cultural inertia.

Quinsey says, “A lot of things are said about being true to yourself in relationships. There’s this idea that you should love a certain way or not because it might be selfish, but in the end, you have to ask yourself if you can be happy.” Likewise, Matthew Erskine, who plays Bunthorne and has been a part of the Savoy Society for eight years, speaks to finding that happiness in loneliness: “This is the exceptional, unprecedented [Gilbert and Sullivan] opera where someone ends up alone. Bunthorne ends up alone, and it’s funny, but I like Quinsey’s direction with his lily. He looks pensively at this symbol of poetry and Aestheticism and he tosses the flower, accepting that he doesn’t need to be aesthetic, [and] that it’s okay to be single.”

In all its romance and absurdity, the production marries biting social commentary on Aesthetic affectation with a modern sensibility that feels sincere and approachable. The McGill Savoy Society embraces Patience’s tongue-in-cheek spirit with confidence, delivering a production that could only be made by a team that is unafraid to love their work as selfishly as necessary. As the show ultimately reminds audiences, we owe it to ourselves — and to others — to fall madly in love with who we truly are.

The post Patience Is A Virtue appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Directed by the recently-deceased Rob Reiner (also known for rom-com royalty When Harry Met Sally), The Princess Bride is a family-friendly classic filled with adventure, romance, and iconic quotes. Following a fairytale told by a grandfather to his grandson, the film, starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, and Robin Wright, portrays the treacherous journey a swash-buckling pirate undertakes to reunite with his one true love, who had been taken captive. If he wanted to, he would, am I right?

In addition to memorable characters and complex storylines, music has been a key part of film since the dawn of sound cinema. After all, we can’t all claim to have watched the Harry Potter or Star Wars franchises in their entirety, but I’m sure most of us can recognize their musical leitmotifs once played. Unsurprisingly, this public consciousness and instant recognition of cinematic soundtracks has led to a soaring popularity of the film-in-concert format over the past few years. All over Canada and the world, films like La La Land and Jurassic Park (among many others) and their legendary soundtracks have been adapted into this performance format. 

“It takes the best elements of the theatrical experience and adds live elements through the orchestra,” says Evan Mitchell in an interview with the Daily. Mitchell is the musical director of the Kingston Symphony, a professional orchestra. Humans, he muses, are hard-wired for connection and shared experiences. Live performance and music thus heighten the usual cinema-going experience by connecting attendees via their common multi-sensory immersion into a fantasy world through film and music. “It’s the most exciting format for a popular orchestra that I’ve ever encountered in my career.”

The process of putting together the film-in-concert experience as a symphony’s musical director is complex. “It takes several dozen viewings of the musical parts of the film [for me] to become familiar with it, and I have a monitor so I can see what the audience sees,” recounts Michell. “It requires a lot of coordination because the orchestra has to be in perfect sync with the film. With a concerto or opera, the artists can react to changes, but movies will continue playing with or without you. It doesn’t matter how good [the music] sounds if it isn’t in time with the movie.” 

Nevertheless, according to Mitchell, the orchestra, made up of local, Montreal-based musicians, will only be conducting one singular rehearsal for the showings of The Princess Bride In Concert, which speaks volumes about the mastery and brilliance of its members.

The Princess Bride In Concert is set to be a treat for the eyes and the ears. Originally, the score was played on a synthesizer known as the Synclavier, an early digital synthesizer and music workstation produced in various forms from the late 1970s into the early 1990s. However, transposed into a live orchestral score, Mitchell declares that the musical experience of the film in concert will be “an improvement” from the original. “Artistry is incredibly important. You will be more connected to the music than ever before, so much so that you might forget the orchestra is even there.”

So, what are you waiting for? Sharpen your swords, hold onto your hats, and book tickets for you and your knight/jester/princess (or even just yourself) for The Princess Bride In Concert today. Tickets start at $54.98. Missing out would be… inconceivable!

The post The Princess Bride Swings into Concert this Valentines’ Day appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The play follows the young and newly-engaged Natasha (Claire Latella, U1) and her cousin Sonya (Miranda De Luca, U3) as they arrive in Moscow while Natasha awaits the return of her fiancé from the war. In the meantime, Natasha is seduced by the charming but married Anatole (Frank Willer, U1), and is subsequently carried into a world of scandal and societal ruin. Her last hope lies with Pierre (Sam Snyder, U4), a lonely outsider who finds love and compassion for the lost Natasha. Natasha’s search for love and finding her way in the world is reminiscent of the period of self-discovery of many university students. This makes it possible to recognize yourself in Natasha, even though she is living in a different moment in history.

The show’s immersive qualities are what really made it special, especially for the select audience members who were chosen to experience dance sequences on stage with the cast. Even those sitting in the balcony were included in the performance, with the actors running and dancing up the stairs. The musical made use of every possible part of the theatre, and seeing actors singing and dancing just a few seats away in the aisles of the balcony made the experience feel immersive. This also ensured that every single audience member was in on the fun.

While the show is full of exciting and celebratory moments, there are also beautiful, somber passages. Natasha’s solo, “No One Else,” was made especially captivating because of Claire’s remarkable vocal performance. The cast’s all-around professionalism drew you in from start to finish. Not to be ignored, the incredibly talented band played center stage for the entire show with almost no break.

For audience members familiar with Tolstoy’s War and Peace, they will recognize that the passage adapted for this musical takes place in a privileged society about to be brutally interrupted by the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. There is an underlying sense of tension and impending change. AUTS’s interpretation of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 was not only a ray of warm sunlight during a cold winter day, but also a piece of art that prompted audience members to reflect on their own lives as well as the world around them.

The Daily sat down with some members of the cast and creative team to discuss the production further. I had the pleasure of interviewing Milan Mivill- Dechene (MMD), the musical’s director and choreographer; Leila Khelouiati (LK), the props designer; Sam Snyder (SS), who played Pierre; and Claire Latella (CL), who played Natasha. The following interview has been shortened and edited for clarity and conciseness.

Sophia Pinzari for The McGill Daily (MD): How was it adapting a recently-made Broadway show? What did you change or keep the same from the original production?

MMD: There are really cool elements that have come to be associated with the show, like the immersive qualities and actors that are running around the entire space. It was exciting to think about different ways we could challenge staging conventions and embody the experience that Dave Malloy had when he was at a club in Russia, and there were people running and dancing around him, eating pierogi. What was exciting for me was getting to do the show with a group of younger people. Natasha and Sonya are arriving in high society Moscow, like how we arrive at university with all these high aspirations. Throughout it, we drink and party; but we can also lose ourselves, find ourselves, and grow in different ways.

MD: As one of the production members, are the props and set true to the era, or a more modernized vision? How did you go about finding the props that you need?

LK: Milan’s vision was a blend of modern and period, so it was hard to find stuff that mashed the two together. One aspect is the envelopes. Obviously, paper is very white. For older times, you need more aged-looking paper, so it’s all been tea-dyed to make it look vintage. I mostly source my props from Amazon because it’s quick, but I did go to different McGill theatre groups and the Seagull Center for Performing Arts, which had this amazing warehouse of props where I got to hang out and find some things.

MD: What was your process in finding your characters?

CL: [Natasha has been] a bit of a dream role of mine, so getting to come up with my own take on [her character] has been exciting. It’s also been fun working with the other actors, seeing their interpretations, and working out our ideas of the characters and their relationships with each other together. We get to make our own version of the show, which is really fun.

SS: I have to agree, the cool thing about Comet is it really does feel like an ensemble piece because everybody is singing all the time and is constantly on stage helping create the story… so it’s been interesting to find where your interpretation of your character fits within the ensemble. It can be easy to gravitate towards simple answers for why characters are doing things, so looking at it from a wider angle has been interesting.

MD: How has doing the musical here at school added to your experience at McGill? And how is it managing to prepare for performances while also being full-time university students?

CL: Specifically, this year, I can’t imagine not having done this show. It’s obviously been a big-time commitment, but one that I had zero regrets about. It’s a process that makes the year for me, and I don’t know what I’m going to do in February [when the musical is over]. When I have a day full of classes and then rehearsal, that’s what I look forward to. I can’t imagine McGill without it.

SS: This is my third year with AUTS, and it’s made my university career for sure. It’s unique. I’ve had the immense privilege of doing other shows on campus, but with something like AUTS, the process is so long from September through to February, so it’s been really fulfilling to be able to stick with the character and show and to be able to refine and refine. In terms of time and pressure…what a fun problem to have.

MD: Even though the show is set in 1812 Russia, what message do you think the show has for today’s world, especially for the students who will be watching it?

MMD: There are a lot of parallels between the present moment we’re living in and back then, especially in terms of political unrest. Right after the show ends, the book keeps going, and Napoleon’s invasion happens, everything crumbles, and the city is burned. So we have this tension between this really lavish lifestyle that these characters are living and everything that’s about to crumble. It begs the question of how we are spending our time and living our days. I think the way we approached this is the image of the broken time machine — we have these two time periods happening simultaneously, but the more modern elements allow us to jump into these moments with the characters easily.

SS: The source material has major themes of young love and finding purpose, and I think everyone watching will have some sort of point of connection to what they’re seeing on stage. I think most university students can lament a failed situationship or a terrible breakup, or a confusing time in their lives where they weren’t sure what they wanted to be.

AUTS ran six sold-out showings of their production of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 from January 26-31 2026.

The post An Electrifying Journey of Young Love and Self-Discovery appeared first on The McGill Daily.

ii.FTG is certainly a labour of love. The process of creating the show, Figaro told me, started “about two years ago,” with all three of the performers involved in it “since day one.”

“The work started out of the studio,” Figaro said, “with a process of building playlists, listening to playlists, [and] paying attention to music videos.” With Djeff Jean-Philippe (stage name: DJ Chef Jeff) seamlessly mixing live during the dance performance, music is the heart and soul of ii.FTG. Figaro mentioned a “writing workshop” that the three artists partook in before the creation process, with “discussions about lineage, heritage, and also how male artists rap about women.” From this, ii.FTG started to take shape.

Key inspirations for the show, Dupas stated, are “Francophone rap” and “Afrobeats”. The influence of both genres shines through both visually, in the piece’s costumes and lighting, and in the dancers’ movements.

When I arrived at the performance space, MAI exuded a friendly, welcoming atmosphere. As people took off their snow boots and entered the space, there was a collective sense of the outside world slipping away. What followed was certainly an immersive experience. Assamba sat on a stool by the entrance, completely still, while Figaro, clad in an iridescent hoodie with her face covered, moved around the stage, at times coming up close to the audience. With seating on both sides of the room, the audience encircled and became submerged in the movements of the duo in the center.

The show opened dramatically, with Assamba entering and giving the audience an arresting stare. The music started slowly, with Assamba and Figaro’s natural, intimate movements exuding a palpable connection between them. The dancers, Dupas described, work “within systems of improvisation” – each night is different, but the performers always work from the ideas they built together in the studio.

The costumes were inspired by music videos, with links to “Aurélie and Athena’s personal styles,” Dupas tells me – a testament to “club settings where you’re not wearing ‘dance clothing,’ but just clothing that makes you feel good.” With two costume changes in an hour-long performance, the space became metamorphic. After Figaro’s chrysalis-like removal of her hoodie revealed her mouth to be taped shut, her next costume included a reflective mesh over her face, portraying thematic “opacity” that Dupas worked with to exemplify how the audience can never fully see into the dancers’ worlds.

Over the course of the experience, the lighting moved from darkness, with long, dramatic shadows and silhouettes, to spotlights, to strobe effects, melding smoothly with the range of reverb, echo, and looping in the show’s auditory landscape. At times, DJ Chef Jeff was illuminated at his decks, blurring the lines between music and dance throughout the performance.

The show ended with a club-like finale and salsa-esque moves between Figaro and Assamba. As the lights came on, there was a grin on every audience member’s face, myself included.

ii.FTG is more than a dance show. To Dupas, there is always a “dialogue” between music and dance – “there are moments where some of the gestures will inspire the music, the glitching, and some other times where it’s really the music taking over.” With DJ Chef Jeff’s dance background, the two forms melded naturally together.

For Assamba, ii.FTG shows how “song can become a world in itself,” with each number telling its own personal story through the duo’s physicality. For Figaro, it was like “inviting people to my personal listening party.” In fact, DJ Chef Jeff’s mix was inspired by a playlist created by Dupas and Figaro, transforming ii.FTG into a uniquely personal space.

‘FTG’ has an open meaning: ‘For The Girls,’ ‘For The Gays,’ and ‘Ferme Ta Gueule’ (trad. ‘shut up’) are some of the many interpretations of the title, reflecting the fluidity of meaning that ii.FTG offers.

I asked what advice the artists would give to anyone in Montreal hoping to pursue a creative career. For Assamba, it’s important to be your “authentic self.” For Figaro, it’s about “connecting with community, but also staying humble and curious.” For Dupas, it’s to “trust what you love geeking about.”

ii.FTG truly felt like a work of passion and collaboration. I was privileged to have been able to share time and space with such original artists who truly enjoyed and believed in what they were putting out into the world.

The post ii.FTG: A Tour de Force appeared first on The McGill Daily.

This decisive calm characterises Currents of Care, the newest exhibition in conjunction with McGill’s Critical Media Lab. Ideated and curated by Saskia Morgan, Ava Williams and Hannah Marder-MacPherson — the bright-eyed trio behind Fleeting Form Studio — Currents of Care magnifies water’s role as a key lifesource, inextricably connected to all other life forms on Earth. Fleeting Form aims to fill a gap in fine arts programming at McGill, creating a space for students who are passionate about the intersections between environmental action and art but lack the outlets to materialise those interests.

Currents of Care marks the collective’s most ambitious endeavour yet. The exhibition, which was set in motion last fall, marries works from Fleeting Form’s artist workshop series last year and fresh ideas informed by the three curators’ experiences with water in their unique academic domains. It unites artists across creative disciplines and backgrounds through a common vision: expressing narratives of hope and desire about the global water crisis through visual, auditory, and tactile art.

“A multi-media exhibition allows people to consider water from where they currently are, which is what we want for our exhibition: to multiply the often singular understanding of water as a particular thing,” Hannah expressed in an interview with the Daily.

As the viewer first steps into the Currents of Care space, they are met most strikingly by three small pools at the centre of the room: an interactive format designed by the three curators themselves. Even up close, the pools look like abysses stretching far below the Critical Media Lab’s checkered tile floors. In each pool, which is lined by canvas from Fleeting Form’s workshop series, poems by Erin Robinsong lay printed on laminated sheets and floating on the water’s surface. Viewers are not only permitted but encouraged to touch and interact with the water, sourced from the St. Lawrence river. 

“Even if you live in Montreal, chances are you haven’t had the chance to actually touch or swim in the St. Lawrence, especially now during the winter,” recounted Ava. “We wanted our viewers to think about water’s availability to us, and the ways we come in contact with it in our everyday lives. Having water physically present in the room was really important to us to make the space feel alive.”

“In interacting with the water, the people who come into the exhibition aren’t just static observers but participants leaving physical traces,” continued Hannah. “In a small way, they then become part of the piece, which reproduces the cyclical ways in which we affect water and it affects us.”

The pools of water allow viewers to think deeply about their interactions with water and reflect on its weight in their lives. This sentiment is echoed by Robinsong’s three poems, which explore water’s ties with colonialism, movement and growth. The motif of water acts as a lens through which one can re-imagine the everyday motions of life and thus notice the tributaries that weave through so many of them.

As the viewer walks around the room, their thoughts (or perhaps the blissful lack thereof) is accompanied by a soundscape of water and nature composed by Lina Choi. Mixing sound recordings from natural spaces and bodies of water in Montreal and Quebec, the fifteen-minute soundscape is faintly audible even when one puts on the headphones placed on wooden benches around the pools to listen to readings of Robinsong’s poems, narrated by a lilting voice. The soundscape further immerses the viewer in the exhibition’s peaceful ambience: as if they were drifting, unbidden, on the ripples of a calm lake. 

At the back of the room are sculptures by Montreal artist Nina Vroemen, whose works centre water as an active element of each piece. Be it dripping from a conch shell or expelled as a gentle stream of vapour, each work amplifies the subtle give-and-take dynamics between the viewers and the medium they are observing. Emphasized is the status of water not only as a resource we can exploit, but an age-old entity. 

Throughout one’s visit to the exhibition, a stunningly shot short film by Innu filmmaker Uapukun Mestokosho plays on a loop on a large projector screen in front of the door. Entitled “Nipi utaiamun” (The Voice of Water), the film depicts the personal relationship between the filmmaker and water. It further explores the element’s capacity to relieve pain and smooth over trauma through wide shots of women interacting with water: from a girl playfully blowing bubbles underwater, to a woman playing a drum on the shore with the tide flowing quietly onto the sand beneath her feet. Mestokosho’s voice, accompanied by drumming and the rush of rivers, delivers her poetic essay in both Innu-aimun and French through the set of headphones offered before the screen.

“Our dominant understanding of water as a resource is deeply influenced by colonial ways of thinking,” remarked Saskia. “In curating our exhibition, we were deeply inspired by the works of Indigenous thinkers like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson that resisted these colonial understandings and exploitations of water — conceiving of water not as a resource, but as kin and co-creator of worlds.” 

As a whole, Fleeting Form Studio, through and beyond Currents of Care, are passionate activists for art as a form of resistance, and as a critical means of reframing ecological crises. “The emotional response it can evoke in people as they personally reconsider dominant ideas becomes one they can materialise through action in their own lives,” mused Ava. 

“Change has to be something everyone can participate in,” stated Hannah.

The team is confident in the transformative potential of art not just for individuals, but for large-scale structural change. “Rethinking our current structures cannot be done without art, where you can tangibly realise the emotional, the beautiful. What we do attempts to bring people’s imagined futures into a space of action,” asserted Saskia. “Engaging in practice that allows for continual change, growth and movement is where we will start to see the seeds of change.”

Currents of Care is being shown at the Critical Media Lab at Peterson Hall 108 from 11-20 December from 12 – 6 p.m. Entry is free.

The post Rethinking States of Matter appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Hosted at MEM: Centre des mémoires montréalaises from October 21, 2025 to March 15, 2026, the exhibition revisits the neighbourhood where the city’s sex workers’ rights movement began and chronicles how sex-worker activism emerged in the early 1990s, taking root in the Centre-Sud amid the AIDS crisis, police repression, and shifting feminist politics. Through archival materials, interviews, community artwork, and deeply personal objects, the exhibition examines how sex workers have historically occupied Montreal’s urban spaces, resisted criminalization, advocated for safer working conditions, and carved out spaces of solidarity in a city that often renders them invisible.

A movement built on persistence

One of the exhibition’s most powerful through-lines is the sheer longevity of Stella’s activism. As Stella’s longtime mobilization and communications coordinator Jenn Clamen notes, marking a 30-year anniversary for sex worker resistance is inherently remarkable. “It is no small feat for a sex worker rights organization to be standing, and standing strong, 30 years later,” she writes. “The sheer amount of hatred, repression, and structural violence from anti-sex work groups, police, and institutions who turn sex workers away has not changed over the centuries, but has taken different forms… Sex workers have been leading the way for everyone’s human rights for decades.”

Over her 23 years with the organization, Clamen has witnessed sex-worker activism extend far beyond outreach work: from collaborating with anti-AIDS groups on safe-sex videos to advocating for incarcerated women, many of whom had done sex work at some point in their lives. Stella’s solidarity, she emphasizes, is not exclusive; this struggle against stigma, criminalization, and policing is shared across communities.

Humanizing the everyday

One of the exhibition’s most impactful sections grapples with a long-standing dilemma: how to tell a collective story in a culture obsessed with the individual, particularly when it comes to sex work. Curators approached sex workers directly, asking them to contribute personal belongings from both their working and private lives.

One object stands out: a Versace perfume box, first given to a transgender sex worker (kept anonymous for safety) by a client. She later used that same box to store all the money she earned; money that later paid for her first gender-reaffirming surgery. She would continue to repurpose it,
placing inside the empty bottles of estrogen she used during her transition. Therein, the box, worn and delicate, contains an entire life-story in miniature: labour, identity, and survival.

The exhibition finds its emotional depth in objects like these, which are humble and unadorned, yet deeply cherished. They demystify sex work not through spectacle, but through the mundane. As Clamen explains, people often come wanting to know “who the sex worker is,” expecting sensationalism. Instead, visitors encounter everyday items: perfume boxes, clothing, makeup bags, handwritten notes. These items challenge assumptions while revealing the layered realities of those who do this work.

Challenging the narratives we inherit

One of the show’s clearest messages is that sex workers have always been part of Montreal’s cultural fabric. Yet, criminalization and stigma continue to shape almost every aspect of their lives such as housing, banking, parenting, border-crossing, and safety.

The exhibition insists on reframing sex workers’ rights not as exceptional demands but as basic human rights. When visitors see sex workers’ personal belongings arranged not as spectacle but as evidence of ordinary life, the politics becomes personal, and vice-versa. It becomes easier to understand why sex worker justice cannot be siloed from broader struggles against policing, misogyny, transphobia, and systematic inequality.

What stays with you

What affected me the most in the exhibition was precisely this tension: the quiet, grounded humanity of the displays juxtaposed against the scale of the structural violence they represent. Standing before a simple perfume box or a handwritten note, one feels how much of this history has been lived in private, out of necessity, out of fear, out of self-protection. Thus, visitors are asked to sit with the discomfort of their own assumptions, reconsidering harmful narratives surrounding sex work, labour, and community resilience. Moreover, visitors also engage with Montreal’s collective memory, recognizing the inextricable ties between sex worker activism and other feminist, queer, migrant justice, and prison abolition movements in the city.

A living archive

Ultimately, “By and For” functions as a living archive built by sex workers themselves, undiluted by
institutions that have historically erased or pathologized them. It offers not only a record of past movements of resistance, but also a reminder that this resistance is ongoing.

Admission is free, and the exhibition remains open throughout the winter.

The post Sex Workers’ Rights and Resistance appeared first on The McGill Daily.

No? Me neither.  However,  it didn’t stop me from visiting the Titanic Immersive Voyage at Place Bonaventure. This experience puts you in the shoes of a passenger of the Titanic and portrays what it would have been like to travel on the famous ship. When I first heard about this, I was intrigued, mainly by the immersive aspect. Were they going to drop us in the middle of the Atlantic? Submerge us in a tub of freezing water? While neither of those things happened, the actual experience blew me away. The simulated voyage includes recreations of parts of the ship, including the bow where Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio stood in the famous shot from the 1997 film inspired by the ship. Visitors are free to pose and take pictures on the front of the boat, as well as in other recreations of the massive ship, such as a large staircase also shown in the film. 

I think all of us remember how we learned about the Titanic for the first time, whether it was from a history book, the film, or — in my case — the Dear Canada book That Fatal Night: The Titanic Diary of Dorothy Wilson. The story of the tragic incident is embedded in our culture and is one that will never be forgotten. This Immersive Voyage not only allows people to gain insight into this tragically short journey, but also preserves the memory of those who were lost to the ultimate sinking of the ship.

Before my visit, my knowledge of the Titanic was limited and mostly came from the movie — which isn’t the best source for historical information. However, I learned a lot during the immersive experience, and would therefore  recommend it to anyone regardless of their confidence in their vast knowledge of  the Titanic. Plaques on the walls described the process of building the Titanic, alongside official blueprints and floor plans. If the structure of the ship isn’t your main interest, you would also get the chance to learn about daily life aboard the ship, detailing how the passengers spent their time. I got the chance to learn about the dinners held each night in the lavish dining rooms, which could fit hundreds of people at once. The voyage is a museum of sorts, with artifacts from the Titanic found in every room. One that stood out to me was a window retrieved from the ship, with some of its panes either broken or missing. It was fascinating to see something that not only came from the ship, but also survived the wreck and recovered.

The entire experience culminates in a room meant to resemble the ocean on that tragic night when the Titanic sank. Projections on the floor simulated the movement of waves, while the main screen depicted the Titanic slowly sinking. The center of the room bore a life-sized replica of a lifeboat with benches where attendees could sit, creating the impression that they were passengers watching the ship go down. In my opinion, this room was the highlight of the experience. The screen displayed distress messages sent from the Titanic to nearby ships, with the only sound heard in the room being a bell ringing non-stop, creating a tense atmosphere fraught with fear and imminent danger. 

What makes this experience even more interesting is the knowledge of how it all ends. As I moved through the connected rooms and read about the famous ship, all I could think about was when and how everything went wrong. The fatal collision was in the back of my mind the entire time, making the experience more solemn.The immersive aspect of the voyage was, in my view, very well done. The recreations of rooms, as well as real artifacts from the real Titanic made me feel like I was actually walking through the ship, while the information on the walls helped me imagine what it would be like to spend a day there. The interactive activities drew me into the experience and made me forget that I wasn’t actually travelling on the Titanic. 

If this informative and somewhat haunting experience isn’t enough for you, there is also a gift shop at the end. From replicas of the heart of the ocean to ice cube trays shaped like the ship, any Titanic merchandise you could ever want can be found here. Personally, I bought a rubber duck in a captain’s uniform, and still believe that the purchase was more than worth it. No matter how somber the experience is at times, it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that anyone, from children to adults, can enjoy.

The post A Terrific Experience at the Titanic Immersive Voyage appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In Nathan Sawaya’s Art of the Brick, LEGO — a popular childhood obsession — has been reconstructed and reimagined into compelling structures of joy, grief, curiosity, and movement. 

“Many of my works center on the phenomena of how everyday life, people and raw emotion are intertwined. I am inspired by my own experiences, the journeys I take and the people I meet,” Sawaya states in the exhibition display.

In this exhibit, there are more than one million LEGO pieces across over 130 separate works..

Unexpectedly, Sawaya’s career path did not originate in art. He obtained his bachelor’s and law degree from New York University, where he simultaneously developed a desire for a creative outlet. The solution to this itch was, as one could guess, LEGO. Although this hobby started in his office cubicle between stacks of paperwork, he quickly started gaining LEGO commissions from around the world. 

Sawaya quit his attorney career to become a full-time LEGO artist and is now officially recognized as a Lego Certified Professional.

One of the first rooms of the exhibition features Sawaya’s iterations of famous paintings: Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, Frida Kahlo’s The Frame, and Edvard Munch’s The Scream. From a distance, these recreations may feel simplistic. Up close, however, it’s made clear that each brick is a deliberate choice, popping with intentional curves and texture that give the paintings a new light. Depth emerges from flatness as Sawaya converts two-dimensional canvases into tactile, dynamic mosaics. 

In Starry Night, swirls of color pulse upward, transforming legos into modular motion. In The Frame, Kahlo’s portrait is a three-dimensional figure inside a hollow, box-like frame—breathing life back into Kahlo’s original painting. In The Scream, the methodical brick placement exudes the essence that the original painting intended to brew, showing off Sawaya’s stark attentiveness to precise curves, vivid colors, and fine details.

An adjacent gallery honors the Roman and Greek artistry as well as other historical stone sculptures in the form of fastidious LEGO reconstructions that capture the curvature and intention of the originals. Upon reading each of the placards, one can clearly see how Sawaya underwent the painstakingly difficult process to replicate the smooth curves and lines, ultimately crafting a balance between artistic tension and perfection. Additionally, LEGO adds a unique sense of fragility to the artwork as the imperfections are clearly visible in the sculptures. 

Beyond the entrancing bright colors and intricate sculptures, the exhibition’s true emotional core appears in darker, more intimate galleries. Viewers are immersed in introspection as Sawaya displays his critiques and thoughts on human and societal perception, namely through his works titled Wall, Underneath, and Mask Construction. In Underneath, Sawaya has written on the placard: “If you were to pull back your skin and show what was Underneath, would it be so scary? A lot of the time, probably yeah.” The sculpture depicts a face being pulled down, revealing a discomforting image of a skeleton looking directly out at the viewer. Through this visual, visitors are confronted by the universal tension between public perception and private truth. Here, Sawaya uses LEGO as a profound commentary on deceptive human interactions in the modern-day world.

A keystone of the exhibition lies in a separate room. Made up of an entire summer’s worth of building, we can behold a 80,020 piece, a six-metre-long T. rex skeleton dominating the room with roaring majesty. Nearby, a LEGO safari-esque gallery reimagines nature in life-sized renditions of a wide range of wild animals. Flamingoes, giraffes, tigers: you name it. Each animal is in the foreground of a hyperrealistic photographic landscape which, in my experience, urges the viewer to consider environmental preservation and empathy for the endangerment of species worldwide. In this case, plastic bricks are both pure mesmerization and an homage to environmental sustainability. 

Upon entering the final exhibition room, visitors are greeted by perhaps Sawaya’s most famous piece, Yellow — a human figure tears open its chest and bricks spill onto the stand, igniting eye-catching, tender sentiments to each viewer. Sawaya recognizes that the emotional and physical elements of Yellow are what garners so much attention from adults and children alike: “I think we grown-ups appreciate how cathartic ‘opening oneself up to the world’ can be for our souls. And the kids? Probably because yellow guts spilling onto the floor looks cool.” Although the piece may captivate its audience in these ways, Sawaya explains that for him, Yellow is ultimately about the “metamorphosis [he has] been through on [his] journeys.”

Finally, visitors enter the room where the primary sense becomes touch, rather than sight. Children and adults alike snap together bricks in their own, imaginative ways. I saw many creations, including boats and houses. Other ones weren’t exactly identifiable, but beautiful and creative nonetheless. 

LEGO, in the meticulous hands of Nathan Sawaya, reveals the exceptional potential in turning structure into soul. Even if we may all not make LEGO our prized possession, by leaving the viewer with the same tools that he began with, Sawaya amplifies the idea that the artistry of these masterpieces lies as much in the creative process as in its finished versions. Journeying through Art of the Brick more than simply impresses the eye: it stimulates human connection and introspection, one brick at a time. As Sawaya puts it: “Art nurtures the brain. Whether made from clay, paint, wood or a modern-day toy.”

To Learn More:

Exhibition Website: https://theartofthebrickexpo.com/montreal/ 

Nathan Sawaya Website: https://nathansawaya.com/ 

Exhibition’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofthebrickexpo/ 

Nathan Sawaya’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathansawaya/?hl=en 

The post Turning Structure into Soul appeared first on The McGill Daily.

“Bienvenue,” Bouchard said gently, smiling at the small group before her. As she gestured to the open gallery door, I eagerly stepped inside. I was about to experience a taste test of Bouchard’s newest immersive creation, Fragments: celle qui m’habitait déjà.

Bouchard is a Quebecoise theatre artist trained in scenography at Concordia University, and in Dance and Theatre Theory and Practice at the Université de Nice and the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In 2016, inspired by her experience living with a visual impairment, she launched the research collective Au-delà du visuel (Beyond the Visual) to explore the creation and communication of dance and theatre for blind audiences. Bouchard won the Monique Lefebvre Universal Accessibility Award and the Montreal English Theatre Award for Outstanding Direction in for the project’s first show presented at MAI (Montréal, arts interculturelles) in 2019, Camille: le récit.

On October 20, she premiered segments of Fragments to nine members of the media at MAI. Like Camille, Fragments is a form of immersive theatre based on sonic, tactical, olfactory, and spatial sensations. Accessible to both sighted and blind people or those living with low vision, audience members wear eyeshades to engage all other senses but vision.

I walked into the theater, a bright, airy gallery space with exposed pipes along the ceiling and a gleaming hardwood floor. Nine cushioned chairs were set up along the perimeter of an imaginary square, three lining each of three sides. Bouchard invited us to take off our shoes. I placed mine under my chair and hung my coat on a free-standing rack in the corner of the room. Without my shoes on, my feet felt bare, reminiscent of a kindergarten class sitting in a circle in their socks. It fostered a sense of intimacy among this small group of strangers, all of whom were about to experience art together.

Bouchard emphasized this feeling of connectivity. She told the audience that after the show, we would have experienced a story together, a collective encounter. Before the show began, she distributed eye-shades, encouraging us to put them on right away to acclimate to a lack of vision and immerse ourselves in the experience.

Fragments tells the overlapping story of two women who find refuge in the same house at different times, one in 1950 and one in 2025. Three performers use touch to guide audience members or hand them objects, and a live piano score performed and composed by blind pianist Vytautas Bucionis provides auditory stimulation. Smells, such as the aromas of someone cooking and the bright scent of a forest, are intended to transport audience members to the Quebec countryside town of Sainte-Anne-de-Sorrel, where the story takes place.

As written in the show’s press release, the poetic tableaux of Fragments slowly reveals the emotions that the two women share across time periods, as well as the contradictions between them. For both, living in this countryside home allows them to access freedom and break from social obligations.

As I placed the eyeshades over my closed eyes, I felt like a weight of stimulation had been lifted from my shoulders, relaxing slightly into my seat as I listened to Bouchard’s lilting French. We would experience the show with all of our senses except vision, she explained. We would encounter the first two scenes of her typically 90-minute performance, and would be led by a sighted guide to another room during the experience.

“Okay, on peut commencer,” she concluded. As the show began, feet shuffled into their places around us. The first thing I noticed was a manufactured wind sweeping through the room. It tickled my skin viscerally, goosebumps raising the hairs on my forearms. Piano music swept in with the wind, a melancholic wave warming the airy room.

A woman’s voice proclaimed the year 1950. Another voice followed, stating the year 2025, location Sainte-Anne-de-Sorrel. The voices meshed with the piano, wind whirring throughout the soundscape. The sound of pencils scratching against paper suddenly filled my right ear; a frantic sound, as if the writer could hardly wait to ge their ideas onto the page. I felt inexplicably stressed, as though I, too, were hurrying to transport ideas onto paper.

At first, my mind wandered away from the experience to my to-do list, to adjectives I wanted to use to describe the show in this article after it was over. I reminded myself to focus on the show.

The women’s voices continued to overlap as the show went on, weaving over one another like a relay baton, distinctive yet collaborative. At one point, as the narrator declared the month of January, paper snow fell onto my head, gently grazing my hair. I startled at this contact, feeling each of my other senses more intensely with my sight removed.

It took a few minutes, but once I relaxed and let myself surrender to the experience, I was immersed in it — so much so that when a guide gently took my hands, unfolding them from where they lay clasped in my lap and led me to another room, I let them take me wherever they wanted to go. I wobbled slightly as walked without sight, but as I followed their stride, I was surprised at how much I could trust this stranger, never before seen. This blind trust felt liberating.

Guided into a plush desk chair, I sat down, feeling for the arms of the chair before placing my hands
on my lap. Soon, an object was placed onto my open palms. As the narration continued, discussing the names of iconic female authors — Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, accompanied by the frantic rustling of papers — I touched each crevice of the object. From its triangular edges at the top and its flat bottom, I concluded that it was a miniature house.

The women exclaimed words like “fuir” (“flee”) and “solitude” into the air, sharing sentiments across time and space. I felt like I was both floating and rooted firmly into my seat, my mind a whirlwind set off by tactical and auditory sensations

The narrators faded into silence, the piano slowing to a stop. Bouchard announced the end of the
scene — “coupé,” she quietly pronounced — and I took off my eyeshade, dazedly blinking at the bright light. My fellow audience members smiled at each other, realizing that Bouchard had been right. We had lived through something together now. The artistic narrative had become a true shared experience between us all.

After the show, I spoke with Bouchard, who greeted me with a gracious smile, thanking me for taking interest in her work. We sat on two chairs on the perimeter of the theater, Bucionis’ continued gentle
piano-playing floating into the space.

For many years, Bouchard recounted, her artistic work wa primarily visual, studying stage design and then working as a lighting designer. In 2009, she completed her master’s degree. The topic of her thesis was the sensoria experience of performers and the history of the senses. “That’s when I realized, ‘Oh, what I do is really visual,’ and it’s kind of ironic becaus I have a visual impairment,” Bouchard said. That led her to question what theatre without sight would look like.

When Bouchard started the Au-delà du visuel collective with a tea of collaborators in 2016, she began
creating art with an eyeshade or with her eyes closed. For the first time, “my handicap was no longer an obstacle,” Bouchard said. “I realize that I [had] created a work environment that was totally accessible for myself.”

For Bouchard, it is important to experience the world without sight especially given the ubiquitous visual stimulation sighted people ar subjected to through digital technology. “To take a moment to turn that off, and be together, and be open to listening to our other senses, that can be really valuable,” she said. Therefore, her artistic team see visual impairments as a “strength to innovate new ways of making art and of sharing art with the audience.”

Bouchard intends for audience members to walk away from Fragments with a feeling o empowerment. She hopes that the audience can learn to let go and trust someone they don’t know to guide them. “That’s something that blind people experience all the time, and I think that we can also learn from that trust.”

Fragments: celle qui m’habitait déjà premiered at MAI on October 22 an runs until November 8. Students can purchase tickets for $22.

The post Beyond The Visual appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Released in 1975, the album followed the earth-shattering success of Dark Side of the Moon (1973), which has since become the longest-charting record in Billboard history. With a well-documented history of interpersonal struggle amongst band members and the enormous pressure of having to follow one of the most important projects in music history, Pink Floyd emerged with an album centered on the themes of absence, isolation and loss—particularly in relation to former band member Syd Barrett whose substance abuse issues and declining mental health culminated into his departure from the band in 1968. 

Half a century later, its themes feel more relevant than ever before.

Having been introduced by my once-hippie father to Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1979) at a young age, I have always had a profound admiration for the uniqueness of the band’s psychedelic style and experimental sound. Revisiting them now, it is evident that their work has not only withstood the test of time, it has successfully predicted how young people feel in relation to the dystopian world it once imagined.

“Remember when you were young? You shone like the sun.”

Written as a tribute to Syd Barrett, the opening lines of the album’s first song “Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Pts. I-V)” romanticize a brighter past before exploring what it means to feel truly alone in a world where chaos and social turmoil reign supreme. Unlike Dark Side of the Moon, which focuses on existential themes, Wish You Were Here only comments on the outside world to the extent that is relevant in understanding our own positionality as listeners. The effect is a deeply personal one: listeners are invited to reflect not only on the state of society, but on their own place within it.

“You gotta get an album out, you owe it to the people, We’re so happy we can hardly count”

In “Welcome to the Machine” and “Have a Cigar”, Pink Floyd openly expresses their resentment towards the demands of the music industry and capitalist greed. Then and now, these songs allow young people to connect with the voices of teachers, politicians and anyone else imposing unreachable standards on those still trying to understand themselves. In a world marked by a new kind of social and political turmoil, the message lands with a renewed strength on the young people of today. On university campuses, at family dinner tables, and across social media, the division which has become stronger than ever has led to greater feelings of isolation and being lost. One can’t help but feel like the dystopian universe that the band once warned us about has come into existence.

“We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl year after year, running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears, wish you were here.”

That refrain from the album’s title track, “Wish You Were Here”, captures a mood familiar to 2025: the sense of longing for connection in an era defined by disconnection. Above all else, the lyrics of Roger Waters, the voice of David Gilmour and the band’s instrumentals make us, the listeners, feel like outsiders in our own home. This song in particular demands that listeners ask themselves the following; how did things get so messed up? In a society where anxiety and depression rates are skyrocketing to unprecedented levels, it comes as no surprise that its themes have taken on a renewed importance. Arguably more so now than in the 1970s, young people feel increasingly resentful and powerless against a system that they did not create.

And yet, Wish You Were Here is not without hope.

For all its darkness, the album maintains a nostalgia and wishfulness for better days. Even in its most somber moments, Pink Floyd looks back fondly at what has been lost and holds onto the possibility of renewal. Perhaps this is where the record’s timelessness lies: in its ability to balance despair with longing, anger with understanding and pain with beauty.

Fifty years later, we are reminded that the themes of the album are not only still relevant, but are more important than ever before. Looking beyond all its cynicism, Wish You Were Here doesn’t just describe a fractured world; it helps us endure it. On this anniversary, the teenagers of the 70s all the way up until today’s generation are reminded that the album’s greatest gift is the comfort of knowing that someone else feels these emotions too.

The post Welcome (back) to the Machine appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Sometimes, all we want is to sit down, cuddle with a pillow, and press play on the next episode of their favorite series. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how streaming platforms have trapped us into loving our screens and the romance and drama they portray, instead of the messy reality of loving the person next to us. In today’s media landscape, love is no longer just a feeling but a product. Shows like The Summer I Turned Pretty, Better Late Than Single, and Love Island USA may seem wildly different, but each demonstrates how romance is packaged, marketed, and sold.

Jenny Han ’s The Summer I Turned Pretty began as a young adult book trilogy published in the late 2000s and was adapted into a Prime Video series in 2022, with every new season timed for a summer release. The story follows Isabel “Belly” Conklin as she spends summers at Cousins Beach, caught in a love triangle between brothers Conrad and Jeremiah while navigating the awkward but intoxicating shift from adolescence to adulthood. By the time the third and final season dropped this July, the show had cemented itself as one of the defining comfort watches of the season.

On the surface, it’s a teen romance: sunsets, heartbreak, and Taylor Swift ballads. But the show’s appeal goes deeper, tapping into multiple layers of nostalgia. For longtime fans of the novels, the adaptation commodifies memory itself. Amazon is selling not only a streaming series but the chance to revisit a beloved story in a new format. Some viewers compare scenes to the dog-eared pages they once read under their blankets. Some viewers simply watch to relive the feeling of being that teenager again. What was once private imagination is now communal, bingeable content.

The release strategy sharpens that effect. By releasing each season in the summer, Prime has turned the series into an annual ritual, one that feels less like coincidence and more like a marketing cycle. Fans may forget about Belly and her romantic indecision during the school year, but when summer rolls around, the show becomes a seasonal marker, pulling viewers back into the story exactly when they’re most susceptible to longing for beach days and first loves. In this way, The Summer I Turned Pretty commodifies not just romance, but the rhythm of time itself: selling the very idea of summer back to its audience.

While The Summer I Turned Pretty sells nostalgia, Love Island USA sells pure spectacle. Now in its seventh season, the show drops a group of singles into a luxury villa — this time in Fiji —and isolates them from the outside world. No phones, no internet, no distractions. Their lives shrink to bikinis, challenges, and strategic re-couplings under the constant gaze of cameras. The twist is that viewers play judge, jury, and executioner: voting on their favorite contestants, deciding eliminations, and ultimately crowning the winning couple.

On the surface, it’s fun, sexy, and easy to watch. It’s the kind of show you put on when you want your brain to turn off. But Love Island isn’t really about romance. It’s about selling romance as a product. Contestants quickly realize that relationships are less about intimacy and more about performance. Stay likable, stay desirable, stay “shippable” — that’s the real strategy. Love becomes a currency, traded for screen time, social media clout, and eventual sponsorship deals once the villa doors close.

The commodification doesn’t end with the finale. Love Island creates online frenzies, spilling into Twitter threads, TikToks, Instagram edits, and dinner-table conversations. Viewers aren’t just passive consumers; they become active participants, debating recouplings with strangers on the internet and bonding with friends over favorite contestants. The show sells love twice — first as drama on-screen, and then as discourse in everyday life. Even our conversations, our opinions, our memes become part of its reach, proof that romance packaged as spectacle can extend far beyond the villa.

Netflix’s Better Late Than Single, which premiered this July, feels worlds apart from the glossy drama of Love Island. Instead of Instagram-ready contestants, it introduces “모태솔로 (motae solos)” — a Korean term for people who have never dated in their lives. These men and women, mostly in their late twenties and thirties, move into a shared house where they receive style coaching, attempt first crushes, and stumble through awkward conversations with all the hesitation of absolute beginners.

What stands out is how different this feels compared to the norms of Western reality dating shows, which tend to center young contestants who present themselves as effortlessly confident in love. Here, awkward silences, tentative gestures, and shy confessions take center stage. The effect is surprising for viewers used to high-drama formats: intimacy is portrayed not as fast-paced spectacle but as slow, uncertain progress.

Until recently, a series like this might have reached mostly K-drama fans. But Netflix’s global distribution has carried Better Late Than Single to audiences around the world, many of whom find its vulnerability refreshing. That’s the irony: what is framed as “authentic” is also carefully curated, packaged, and sold as novelty. Even sincerity, even awkwardness, becomes a product for global consumption.

Maybe that’s the real butterfly effect of these shows: what starts as a simple binge on the couch ripples into how we think about love off-screen. Why risk heartbreak when Belly, or a villa full of strangers, can give you an adrenaline rush or butterflies on demand? Why settle for awkward first dates when you can watch others stumble through theirs in high definition? These series soothe us, entertain us, and sometimes trick us into expecting too much. That’s the irony of commodified love: it feels just real enough to keep us hooked, even if the romance in our lives can’t quite compete.

The post The Commodification of Love appeared first on The McGill Daily.

For the last five years Launière has been creating art in almost every field at a breakneck pace. In 2023 alone she: premiered her first album on Spotify, Taueu (“in the centre”); published her first book, Akutu (“suspended”); acted in a short film, Katshinau (“Dirty Hands”); and created two stunning (click the link, you’ll thank me later) visual art pieces, Takutatinau and Ninanamapalin – My Body is Trembling. 

In 2019, Launière founded her production company Auen Productions to “interweave the presence of the two-spirited body and experimental audiovisual while drawing inspiration from the cosmogony and sacred spirit of the animals of the Innu world and express a thought on silences and languages ​​through the body.” Launière has directed seven completed performance works so far, and she has another titled Takutauat on the way. 

Earlier this October, I attended a production of Launière’s latest work, a performance art piece titled Aianishkat (“One Generation to the Next”) at Agora de la Danse theatre. The show starred Launière, her mentor Rasili Botz, and her three-year-old daughter Maé-Nitei Launière-Lessard, bringing together three generations of Indigenous women to explore the process of intergenerational pedagogy. The first notes I took after leaving the show were: “Never before have I seen such beautiful hair,” “The child did everything right,” and “Merci, bon nuit.” 

I can’t call it “hairography” because that word would cheapen Launière’s use of hair in this performance. Nor can I leave it at “beautiful” because that would leave out the significance behind its use: Launière utilized her own and Botz’s hair to explore how both trauma and knowledge are passed down through generations. 

Aianishkat began with Botz alone on stage, carefully unwrapping a blanket to reveal chunks of cut black and brown hair, which she spread across the floor as if they were ashes. Then, while braiding her own hair, she fashioned the blanket into a makeshift basket and collected what hair had been thrown away. 

Fabric is integral to this piece; most of the props were either clothing or blankets, which the actors manipulated into different forms to serve a unique artistic purpose. Launière entered the stage shortly after Botz had finished cleaning the floor, carrying a basket of her family’s laundry and sitting down to fold the pieces in an orderly fashion. Her daughter soon joined her onstage. 

Prior to the performance, my friends and I debated how a toddler could participate in this piece. We wondered how a show could run orderly when one of the actors may not understand the concept of a script or cues. I was pleasantly surprised by how perfectly Launière’s daughter performed. Although her actions were, like any toddler’s, unpredictable and spontaneous, everything she did fell completely in line with the performance. Botz and Launière easily ran with the child’s improvisations, occasionally using wind-up toys to coax her back on stage if she wandered into one of the wings. Her sheer joy at accompanying her mother on a stage littered with interesting objects, sounds, and shapes delighted the audience. She not only added a lightness to the second half of the 90 minute show, but also an air of hope for the future. 

Prior to the work, the only performance art I’d seen was a “deconstructed” production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet performed at Toronto’s Young People’s Theatre. It was titled What if Romeo and Juliet… and had four actors each playing changing parts of the scenery from integral scenes in the original play. One actor played a fountain, squatting and flailing his arms. Someone else was a sword, standing on their tippy toes and pointing their fingers at the ceiling. Another actor played the floor.

It left a bad taste in my mouth when it came to the phrase “performance art.” The idea of a primarily improvised production, mainly told through movement instead of words, didn’t particularly interest me. After What if Romeo and Juliet…, I didn’t see how performance art could function well as a medium. 

Yet I became intrigued by Aianishkat as soon as the show lights came on, revealing Botz. I came to a realization about performance art 30 minutes later when all three actors were brought on stage together. The way they interacted was fascinating and told a story all on its own. I realized that nobody on stage was trying to act out a storyline – they were instead performing a truth. Through movement, they were acting out the process of intergenerational teaching. They visually embodied the struggle and perseverance that Indigenous communities have and continue to demonstrate in the fight to uplift their culture in the face of colonization. The power behind this performance stood in the unspoken bond between mentor and student, mother and daughter, artist and audience. 

Launière ended Aianishkat with the only spoken phrase of the performance, “Merci, bon nuit.” She said this with her daughter cradled in her arms, both waving goodbye to the audience and smiling. It didn’t feel right; I thought she should have said “you’re welcome,” because a “thanks” on my part was in order. 

We are all lucky to live so close to Launière’s work. Her next performance art piece, Takutauat, is still in production – updates regarding the time, place, and runtime will be available on her website, www.soleil-launiere.com. In the meantime, I’d implore any art lover in Montreal to treat themselves to one of her many art pieces available online including her book, visual artworks, and award-winning music on Spotify. You can also experience Launière in person at Mundial Montréal on November 19, the Marathon Festival aux Foufounes Électriques on November 20, and Cégep Saint-Laurent on November 29.

The post Soleil Launière: Montreal’s Must-See Multi-Disciplinary Artist appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Fleeting Form Studio is a workshop series formed by McGill students Ava Williams, Saskia Morgan, and Hannah Marder-MacPherson. The founders first met each other in FSCI 198 – a class on the climate crisis and climate action – where they formulated the idea for this project. The goal of the workshop series is to provoke discussions about changing the way McGill students think of climate activism, and to nurture the community around the visual arts at McGill. I went to the first workshop hoping to learn more about textiles from the featured artist, Tina Marais, and came out with so much more. One week later, I met with the founders of Fleeting Form Studio to talk more about their process and the series as a whole.

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

Evelyn Logan for The McGill Daily (MD): When did you begin to draw parallels between climate action and art? Was that always a part of your project or did it come later?

Saskia Morgan (SM): We came up with this project – which was absolutely guided by our professors and TAs – where we would invite artists who were all already working at this interesting nexus between climate action and art. [These artists] could come and speak about what they’re doing and how their art is transformative – and how it should be seen as more than just beautiful. We also made this to address both the lack of fine arts at McGill, and the lack of emotive ways of learning about the climate crisis.

Ava Williams (AW): I’ve always heard of climate change deemed as a wicked problem. The solution is hard to find because it’s a convergence of larger issues that have been created over a long time. Some include colonialism and extractivism and [other] really deep-seated, systemic problems. And if you’re just learning [about this problem] intellectually and technically, it’s solely information and facts. Which is harder to internalize and make sense of the scale of the problem. How can we make sense of it in a way that makes sense to us as people? Art. Art is a very human thing. And so I think for me, it’s a lot about making sense of it.

Hannah Marder-MacPherson (HMM): With all of us being environment students, we’re learning about climate action from a particular lens. Something that dominates our focus is that we learn a lot about our own destruction, and it’s very negative. Then, the corresponding response to that is often limitation, which is not tangible and is also still very negative and directionless. We find there’s never any action [in response to the climate crisis] that’s centered around creation. So that’s where the art comes in, because it’s very much about creation, and it’s very positive, inspiring, and unifying.

MD: Why did you choose Tina Marais as the first artist in your series? What stood out to you about her work?

SM: Just by going down a rabbit hole I stumbled upon Tina, and I found the piece that she explored the most in this workshop: The Entangled Materiality of Water. I was absolutely struck by this work because it was not just about climate change, which so often is too broad [of a topic] to really get a sense of, but instead, specifically about water and how much water is within the fabrics that make our second skin. It also [raises the questions] how many hands touch the clothes that are on us now? How do we take for granted something that we paid $15 for?

AW: [Mirais] said one thing in an interview that I wanted to repeat: everything is made of the same molecules, but in different arrangements. How it just so happens that we as humans have a lot of power over the other arrangements. And she talks a lot about non-human and human interactions, which is going to be a huge thing in the series.

MD: Can you speak a little bit about the lack of fine arts programming at McGill? How has it affected you? How do you feel like your workshop is…

[The group breaks out into laughter]

SM: You’re preaching to the choir.

HHM: I was just going to say, I feel like the arts in general draw upon a different type of knowledge and a different type of thinking. Now, I don’t think this is unique to just McGill, but I feel like a lot of institutions that are more prestigious tend to fall into that pit of promoting science and engineering. There isn’t a recognition that these other types of thinking and creating are just as valuable and are actually very compatible with more scientific pursuits, and they shouldn’t be separated. A large part of our project is working towards interdisciplinary thinking.

SM: Another thing that we’re trying to do with this workshop is not only bring something that a lot of people here may just be missing but also to make art more accessible. We’re so lucky that the Sustainable Projects Fund has helped us basically provide free materials for every participant. We’re limited to the amount of people who can come, but the act of being able to touch materials that you may not be able to otherwise is so important.

The next Fleeting Form Studio workshop will be centered around photography and will take place on October 4. To stay up to date with the workshop series, follow the project on Instagram at @fleeting_form_studio.

The post On Fleeting Form Studio’s First Workshop appeared first on The McGill Daily.