In this new PhotoLab exhibition, Althea Thauberger’s two-channel video installation, L’arbre est dans ses feuilles (The Tree Is in Its Leaves), features the archival collection of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) Still Photography Division in an evocative exploration of history and identity.

Commissioned by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, with support from the Canadian Photography Institute (CPI) of the National Gallery of Canada, the installation was inspired, in part, by the People Tree — a Canadian “family tree” produced by the NFB for Expo 67. The video also examines the legacy of Lorraine Monk, Executive Producer of the Still Photography Division from 1960 to 1980. Interpreting Monk onscreen, Thauberger quotes from interviews and correspondence, while interacting with photographs from the archive.

Plumbing the resources of one of Canada’s most important photographic collections, this new PhotoLab exhibition is an immersive experience that probes constructed realities in Thauberger’s signature style, while encouraging critical thinking on the power structures that define us.