Event

Exhibition | A Celebration of Place

Wednesday, May 22, 2019 17:30toFriday, August 16, 2019 18:00
McLennan Library Building Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room, 3459 rue McTavish, Montreal, QC, H3A 0C9, CA

A Celebration of Place, Chateaufort Community Garden

I started to photograph a community garden near where I live. Although it is only about 15 minutes away it feels like another world. One feels transported to another place and time... sunshine, wind, the smell of earth and things growing. It is a place of regeneration, a place of refuge for the people who live in the area, mostly apartment dwellers.

On my numerous photographic visits I met immigrants from France, Spain, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Iran, Pakistan, Roumania and Bangladesh as well as native Montrealers. Although there are 165 official members there are some 500 participants if one includes immediate family members as well. I have enjoyed watching them lovingly care for their gardens and seeing their gardens explode with vegetables and flowers, some of them native to their countries of origin. I have watched them transform the land over the months with their hard work and dedication.

I have been touched by the experience and the quiet friendships, the generosity of the people and the serenity of the place. It has been a joy and a special privilege for me to photograph this urban oasis and its inhabitants.
Ewa Monika Zebrowski 2001


Artist Biography

 

Ewa Monika Zebrowski’s artistic work engages with the ideas of traces, time and history, displacement and loss, and memory. Zebrowski has had 30 solo exhibitions and has participated in over 50 group shows. She has produced 18 artist’s books since 2004.

Zebrowski holds a BFA in Fine Arts/Photography and an MA in Visual Arts, having firstly worked in the film industry for 17 years. Her work can by found in many international museum and institutional collections including the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Menil Collection, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Britain, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal as well as Yale University, Harvard University, Columbia University, Stanford University, McGill University and the American Academy in Rome.

She recently completed residencies at the American Academy in Rome (2014, 2015, 2018), Hauser & Wirth Somerset (2016), and the Emily Harvey Foundation Venice (2017). She has won numerous awards for her work. She lives in Montreal.
 

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