An exhibition where image, material, and space enter into dialogue with nature.
Balancing documentary photography and expressive interpretation, the works presented explore the shifting boundary between the real and the perceptual, connected by a common thread: design.
Four jewellers with different artistic approaches and conceptual backgrounds create distinctive artworks that transcend adornment to become true wearable micro-architectures. Their works play with light, texture, and volume, revealing the body as a living surface in constant motion. Each jewel becomes a fragment of history—an intimate form that questions our relationship to objects, memory, and materiality.
In dialogue with these works, the artist of suspended mobiles draws inspiration from the legacy of Calder to create delicate structures that float in space. Light and kinetic, these works continually redefine their surroundings, casting shadows and lines that extend the viewer’s gaze beyond the objects themselves. Like three-dimensional drawings, these moving animal-inspired sculptures in fine wood and felt wool from Christiane Lemieux seem to inhabit the air rather than simply occupy it.
The ceramic artist’s evocative sculptures bear witness to women’s lived experiences. Through impressions, scars, and marks embedded in their surfaces, they evoke the traces left by time, memory, and the journeys of life. Clay becomes a sensitive landscape in which personal and collective histories are inscribed.
Photography—at times documentary, at times poetic—weaves these artistic worlds together. It captures the gestures of making, the presence of jewellery on the body, the silent dance of the mobiles in the light, and the expressive power of the ceramic sculptures. Through framing, colour, and composition, photography transforms these objects into painterly images that do more than document: they interpret, translate, and reinvent.
This exhibition offers an immersive experience where design, art, and craft converge. The works are viewed, worn, inhabited, and experienced. Balancing precision of detail with freedom of movement, they invite visitors to rediscover the everyday through a contemporary and deeply sensory lens—where the object becomes image, and the image becomes material.
CLAUDIA GOMEZ
The collection is a personal interpretation of the hidden ecosystems within us. One of these systems is the gut microbiota, a whole universe of life within the body. Through brooches, rings, and necklaces, these ideas take material form. Inner Ecology was born from a dialogue between curiosity and lived experience.
ELIN WEINSTEIN
Elin Weinstein is a jeweller whose work is shaped by her Eastern European Jewish heritage and inspired by the Cree of northern Quebec and the ʼNa̱mǥis First Nation of British Columbia.
While conducting anthropological fieldwork in Bali, she embraced the Balinese belief that some art is alive, inspired by the gods—a philosophy that continues to inform her work.
Her current project, The Matrilineal Fascinator, explores ancestry and memory through sculptural jewelry inspired by the women in her maternal lineage. Life continues as long as your name is remembered.
She uses pearls in unique ways, exploring bold contrasts in her designs. A trip to Tokyo, seeing its vibrant neon landscape, inspired her to incorporate colorful acrylics into her jewelry, creating pieces that evoke playfulness and joy.
Her work brings together cultural scholarship, personal history, and Living Art.
SUSAN MICHELE SMITH
Ting-Fen Chin
Ting-Fen Chin is a Montréal-based silversmith originally from Taiwan. She specializes in hand-forged silver teapots and contemporary jewellery, creating one-of-a-kind works that bridge traditional silversmithing techniques with a contemporary artistic language. Her practice explores form, material, and craftsmanship through meticulous handwork, where each piece is shaped through an intimate dialogue between the maker and the metal. Two of her works were acquired by the City of Montréal for its municipal art collection.
ANUXE
Iranian-born Anuxe discovered ceramics in Montréal in 1990. She explored various techniques, focusing especially on hand-building to develop her sculptural work. Though she uses electric kiln-fired clays, she is also drawn to low-temperature firings methods like smoke firing and primitive techniques. Her artistic approach bears witness to the lived experiences of women, especially Iranian women: the traces and marks on the surface of her sculptures reflect those imprinted in life. Inscribed in her work are themes of childhood, nature, internal struggle, pain, and also lightness.
CHRISTIANE LEMIEUX
MARC CRAMER
A dialogue between documentary photography and painterly interpretation, connected by a common thread: design. Two journeys to the Land of the Rising Sun, in 1985 and 1989, revisited in 2026. From ancient times to the present day, in a spirit of tolerance across differences and religions, generations have intertwined and influenced one another within a society both rooted in ancestral tradition and ever-evolving, through to the very forefront of modernity.
Yves Cousineau
Sculptor [Woodworker] and mobile designer Yves Cousineau, inspired by Alexander Calder’s kinetic objects, creates spiraling mobiles featuring hand-carved animals and spirit creatures influenced by Indigenous traditions. Made of fine local hardwoods, carefully harvested with an eye to their environment, the works come to life in a spirit of symbiosis with Québec forests. Balance, movement in space, and formal beauty distinguish Yves’ mobiles. Starting with rough concept sketches, he lets the process guide his creations, drawing inspiration from the qualities of the wood and its natural anomalies. His newest collection [Boreal Owls] pairs a watchful owl and its inquisitive owlet with other boreal creatures. Featured as well are three additional collections: Arctic Animals, Atlantic Shorebirds, and Dragons and Spirit Animals.
Alain Carrière et Albert Leclerc
Alain Carrière is a graduate of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana. For almost two decades, he studied the Japanese art of floral arrangement under the guidance of Master Mieko Seibi Watanabe. He travels frequently to Japan, where he continues to refine his practice at the Tokyo Sogetsu Headquarters. As successor to Ms Watanabe, he is the president of Seibi-Kai, the Montreal chapter of the Sogetsu school. In addition to teaching floral arrangement, Alain makes ceramic presentation vessels. He will present his floral arrangements in his own ceramic vases but also those from Alblert Leclerc ” Le Palle ” collection and Alexandre McLean’s fine wood vessels
Alexandre McLean
Alexandre McLean, long a museum technician at the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, designs and builds the custom wall-mounted display cases, exhibition tables, functional objects, light boxes, and props our jewellers use to showcase their artworks. He also assists with exhibition installations. This exhibition features his new, individually-crafted fine wood benches and flower vessels. Alex’s workshop is located in the Allied Building on avenue de Gaspé, in Mile End
GALERIE ESPACE
4844 boul. St-Laurent
Montreal, H2T 1R5
24 Sepember – 5 October 2026
10:00 – 20:00
Convergence 2026 