As part of its Artist-in-Residence program, the Museum presents the exhibition To all the unnamed women by artist and independent curator Michaëlle Sergile, a tribute to the lives of Black women in Montreal between the years 1870 and 1910.

For her first solo exhibition in a museum, the artist has created 7 original tapestries on Jacquard looms. Three of them reconstruct images selected from the Museum’s Photography collection, and four illustrate portraits of Coloured Women’s Club of Montreal (CWCM) members. Archival photographs and objects from the Museum collections complete the installation.

Through a blend of archival sources and fiction, the exhibition chronicles the origins of the first organization in Quebec to be created by Black women, the CWCM. Drawing inspiration from the notion of critical fabulation theorized by the American author Saidiya Hartman, the exhibition explores the relationship between history and archival violence.

For this exhibition project, Michaëlle Sergile explores the Museum’s collections, reflecting on the social and political context in which this foundational club for Montreal’s Black communities was created, and on the women who contributed in one way or another to its creation.

Michaëlle Sergile is an artist and independent curator working mainly on archives from the postcolonial period, from 1950 to today. Through her artistic work, she aims to understand and rewrite the history of Black communities, and more specifically of women, through weaving. The artist uses this technique, often perceived as a craft medium and categorized as “feminine", to question the relationships of domination linked to gender and ethnicity.