COHDS

Exhibit - Bodies Carrying: Traces & Stories
2025-04-30 17:00 - 2025-05-16 17:00 (America/New_York)
Bodies carry and transmit traces of memories, sites, and stories—both as acts of care and as burdens to bear.
Bodies Carrying: Traces & Stories is a twofold conversation taking the form of a group exhibition and a program consisting of workshops, performances, and talks. This is an experiment in transforming the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling into a dialogue space that brings together artists and researchers who engage with or reflect on oral history in their work, from the curatorial process to the mise en œuvre.
The exhibition and program explore the traces we carry—the traces of what was willingly or unwillingly passed on, those that were inflicted, and the lingering ghosts of what was left behind.
These imprints can be things we hold onto or want to make more visible, carried through acts of care, (re)connection, and resistance. Yet, these traces also represent the weight of what bodies have borne and still bear. Bodies Carrying: Traces & Stories asks: How do we hold space for both the tenderness and heaviness of what it means to carry?
Exhibition Location
COHDS, 10th Floor – LB-1042; 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W.
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.
Exhibition Hours
May 1 – May 16
Open daily | 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Dates
May 5 – May 8
Please register for individual events.
Vernissage
April 30, 5 à 7, Sunroom (LB-1019)
With durational performance “I Insist” by Sol Worsnip
Program
May 5, 10h-13h
Corps, émotions et recherches: une exploration par cartographie corporelle – Atelier
May 6, 12h-14h
Attuning to Spectralities: Senses, Whispers, and Other Connective Membranes – Workshop
May 6, 15h-16h30
كان حتى ما كان (Once Upon a Place): What Remains of the Halqa? Performing Memory and Absence – Lecture Performance
May 7, 10h-13h
The Metabolism of Silence – Workshop
May 7, 16h-17h30
Intimate Listening- Immersive Theatre
May 8, 14h-15h
Walking Interludes – Reading and dialogue
May 8, 16h-18h
Identity, Care, Labour, and Matrilineal Stories – Performance and Artist Talks
REGISTRATION
Registration forms are linked on each event page.
Curated/facilitated by: Annie Thao Vy Nguyen
Annie Thao Vy Nguyen (they/she) is a Master’s student in Geography and Urban Studies at Concordia University, exploring queer futurity and political imagination through dialogic processes. Their thesis uses oral history to trace the evolution of queer Asian activism in Montreal across generations, using Chinatown as a case study. Annie holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Université de Montréal, with a thesis at the Technical University of Munich on inquiry-based exhibition pedagogy, where they co-developed and co-taught a course on pedagogy in architecture exhibitions. Trained and soon-to-be certified in Philocreation dialogue facilitation, Annie used these tools to facilitate this exhibition and program through a curatorial dialogue with all contributors.

Identity, Care Labor, and Matrilineal Stories– Bodies Carrying Exhibit Programming
2025-05-08 16:00 - 18:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
This is an event composed of two artist presentations followed by a joint Q&A. It will begin with a performance and talk by Cristina Alejandra Jimenez Gomez (Resonant roots: an intergenerational storytelling), followed by a presentation from Javi Fuentes Bernal and David Diaz Méndez on their collaborative project (Démarches décoloniales de fabulation critique et de reconnection: Hypergraphie, performance et futurismes andins dans la création de la Revue d’études Travesti, Q’iwa & Suprabinaires).
(1) Resonant roots: an intergenerational storytelling (Cristina Alejandra Jimenez Gomez):
Cristina Alejandra Jimenez Gomez’s event includes a solo performance (resonant roots) and a performative talk: (mise en corps/puesta-en-cuerpo) which zooms in on the role of coperas (women who worked at cafés, combining traditional waitressing with some escorting services without necessarily being sex workers) in Colombia.
Resonant Roots encompasses Alba’s story (the artist’s great-grandmother) narrated through the voices of her daughter and granddaughter. While a video is projected, the performer enacts physical movements and interacts with objects around the space. Within this maternal lineage, some stories want to be told, others are hidden or denied. Are those stories somehow imprinted in the performer’s body, although unknown? What are the resonances of her body with the audio archives of her distant lineage?
mise en corps/puesta-en-cuerpo expands the inquiry; It is a performative talk which outlines the research process on the concept of public women, focusing on the role of coperas. Also, it draws on the dramaturgical guidelines, the exploration of storytelling, and the creative questions raised to develop these pieces.
Cristina Alejandra Jimenez Gomez (she/they) is a Colombian interdisciplinary artist and educator developing her PhD studies in the INDI program. She is interested in creative, transformative and communal experiences that address critical intersectional concerns. Based in Tiohtià:ke – Mooniyang – Montreal since 2019. CA is affiliated with Hexagram, Milieux-LeParc, COHDS, ALLab, and SenseLab-3e at Concordia University. Editor and workshop facilitator at Kodama Cartonera, an independent publishing house born in Tijuana, Mexico, in 2010. CA’s research-creation approach is performative, feminist, and (an)archival. Her perspectives stem from embodied practices as a source of knowledge, intertwining processes of doing-feeling-thinking. Due to their experience in different theatre troupes, CA learned about diverse techniques focused on developing research and creative methods for, in, and within public spaces and non-conventional stages. Currently, they are a board member of Teesri Duniya Theatre, where she has developed two community engagement projects.
Event language(s)

The performance includes audio in Spanish with video subtitles in English.
The performative talk is held in English.

(2) Démarches décoloniales de fabulation critique et de reconnection: Hypergraphie, performance et futurismes andins dans la création de la Revue d’études Travesti, Q’iwa & Suprabinaires (Javi Fuentes Bernal & David Diaz Méndez)
Decolonial approaches of critical fabulation and reconnection: Hypergraphy, performance, and Andean futurisms in the creation of the Journal of Travesti, Q’iwa & Suprabinaires Studies.
En croisant la fabulation critique, l’hypergraphie et le symbolisme Pastos, cette présentation plonge dans le processus de création du Journal of Travesti, Q’iwa & Suprabinary Studies. Ce journal questionne les récits linéaires du colonialisme afin de réactiver des imaginaires autochtones, en les hybridant avec des pratiques graphiques expérimentales. Portée par les études Travesti et diasporiques, la fabulation critique du journal — conçue en collaboration avec David Mendez pour le design graphique et nourrie par les performances de Javi Fuentes Bernal et de sa mère, Yadila Bernal— devient un outil pour inventer des récits alternatifs qui bousculent les frontières des soi-disant vérités figées de l’historiographie coloniale. À travers une hypergraphie qui entrelace écriture, dessin, symboles ancestraux et langages visuels contemporains, le projet explore des formes de narrations vivantes, plurielles et polysémiques. Cette hybridité agit comme un levier pour reconfigurer les esthétiques Latinx Cholas et imaginer de nouvelles formes visuelles en résonance avec le futurisme andin. En mobilisant la performance comme espace de réactivation des mémoires longues et d’autres répertoires sensoriels, le projet cultive des liens vivants entre transmission intergénérationnelle, fabulation critique et humour. Nous explorons dans cette présentation notre processus de recherche et de création à partir des perspectives sensibles pour penser et habiter nos appartenances en dehors des cadres imposés par le colonialisme et la blanchitude.
Javi Fuentes Bernal est un·e artiste transdisciplinaire, chercheur·e et intervenant·e colombien·ne basé·e à Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Son travail s’inspire des fabulations critiques et des pratiques archivistiques, à l’intersection des pensées trans*travesti, migrantes et autochtones. À travers la performance, la vidéo, l’installation et l’écriture, Javi explore les affects liés à la mobilité, ainsi que les relations entre mémoire, territoire et culture populaire. Javi a récemment contribué à des expositions telles que Unique en son genre (Musée de la Civilisation, 2023), Awera en Bakatá (Museo Nacional de Colombia, 2024), et Le Québec, autrement dit (Musée de la Civilisation, 2024) et Minga Suprabinaire (PHI, 2025). Ses recherches ont bénéficié du soutien d’institutions telles que le Centre de recherche en santé publique CReSP, le Fonds de recherche du Québec, et une bourse Vanier pour ses études doctorales en travail social à l’Université de Montréal.
David Díaz Méndez est étudiant en design graphique à l’École de design de l’UQAM. Il s’intéresse au langage polysémique caractéristique des contextes d’hybridité culturelle et à la manière dont celui-ci peut enrichir les différentes sphères du design graphique. Il a rejoint l’équipe d’Hypercodex en 2023, où il participe à la conception de l’identité visuelle de l’exposition ALCUIN (2023-2024), à l’événement FORUM (2024), ainsi qu’à la recherche et à la conception graphique des projets d’Amandine Alessandra Ephemeral Typography: Writing the impermanent et FLUX/Mémoires Photophobes. II sest illustré aux ADCC Student Awards 2024 en remportant le bronze dans la catégorie design graphique.
Event language(s): French

REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.
