To All the Unnamed Women by Michaëlle Sergile

Exploring the relationship between history and archival violence

Montreal, September 11, 2024 – The McCord Stewart Museum presents To All the Unnamed Women by Michaëlle Sergile, on view from September 13, 2024, to January 12, 2025. Combining archival records and fiction, this exhibition traces the origins of the first collective created by Black women in Quebec, the Coloured Women’s Club of Montreal (CWCM). Drawing on the concept of critical fabulation theorized by American author Saidiya Hartman, Michaëlle Sergile explores the relationship between history and archival violence.

The CWCM

The CWCM – which has been the subject of several of Sergile’s research projects – was founded in 1902 by Black women to help migrant families find housing and access financial support. It was created at a time when the names of Black women were often absent from Montreal archives. The McCord Stewart Museum’s Artist-in-Residence program allowed the artist to deepen her historical knowledge of the organization and the women behind it by exploring the Museum’s collections. Most importantly, it’s an opportunity to introduce the public to an organization that played a key role in the development of Little Burgundy. The exhibition also invites visitors to reflect on systemic erasure and, at the same time, on the context in which these women lived. As Michaëlle Sergile explains: “By celebrating both these nameless women and those who created the Coloured Women’s Club, the exhibition serves as a space for reflection, inviting the public to participate in reconstructing their stories.”

Critical analysis of the collections

This project was produced for the Artist-in-Residence program, which invites artists to take a critical, conceptual look at the McCord Stewart Museum’s collections. It was an opportunity for Michaëlle Sergile to explore the Museum’s Photography collection in search of images of Black women who lived between 1870 and 1910. The artist observed that, regardless of their social status, the vast majority of these women remained anonymous in the rare evidence preserved of their existence, making it difficult to identify them today.

Weaving archives

For Michaëlle Sergile, creation is a way of confronting the limitations of archives, of imagining and fully recognizing the lives of individuals of whom we have only a few traces. Weaving was an obvious choice as a medium for expressing the realities of the Black women featured in the exhibition, as many parallels can be drawn between the themes addressed and weaving. Often associated with handicrafts, this medium is still rarely used by artists. As proof, only 3 computer-assisted Jacquard looms – used by Michaëlle to create her works – are available in Montreal.

“When I started working with textiles, I realized there was a disconnect between the visual arts and craft, as if the two notions couldn’t coexist. I thought it fitted in very well with the way I conceptualized archives, because I was very interested in anything that’s put aside. I felt that the medium of weaving itself was being sidelined. I liked that the word métissage (“racial mix”) contains tissage (“weaving”), just like text and textile.”

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 CWCM members. Archival photographs and objects from the Museum collections complete the installation.

“After Karen Tam’s exhibition devoted to the Chinese-Montreal community, the McCord Stewart Museum’s Artist-in-Residence program now gives Michaëlle Sergile a platform to highlight the role of Afro-descendant women and community organization in our society, and an opportunity to take a critical look at the silences in our collections. This type of project is essential to the Museum’s decolonization process,” says Anne Eschapasse, President and CEO.

“To All the Unnamed Women doesn’t simply commemorate the past, but offers a profound reflection on the creation of memories and the importance of identification. Through archives, I can say what I can’t always say. It’s a great way to create a link with people who once existed but are no longer with us today, to give a sense of continuity to their discourse. I think there’s something beautiful and powerful about thinking of all the people who have had these thoughts before you, and being able to associate them with the period you’re living in,” says Michaëlle Sergile.

Michaëlle Sergile

Michaëlle Sergile is an independent artist and curator working mainly with archives from the post-colonial period, from 1950 to the present day. Her artistic practice aims to understand and rewrite the history of Black communities, and more specifically that of women, through the medium of weaving. Traditionally associated with craftsmanship and femininity, weaving allows her to explore power relations linked to gender and ethnicity.

She has recently exhibited her work at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d’art de Joliette, the Fonderie Darling and the OFF, Biennale de Dakar, Senegal. She also was long listed for the prestigious Sobey Arts Award in 2022. In 2023, she won the Visual Artist of the Year Award at Gala Dynastie and began a residency at the Fonderie Darling.

Artist-in-Residence program

The program invites artists to look critically and conceptually at the McCord Stewart Museum’s collections, reflecting on the relationships between their artistic practice and the objects and stories that emerge in the course of their research.

At the end of each residency, the artists present a solo exhibition of works created for the occasion. This research and creation initiative encourages them to deliver a discursive and hypothetical interpretation of the collections, and to posit new ways of interpreting history in its many forms. The Museum is proud to welcome artist Michaëlle Sergile as the program’s 13th artist in residence.

Curatorial and production team

An exhibition created by the McCord Stewart Museum.
Project management: Caroline Truchon, Project Manager, Exhibitions
Curating: Mathieu Lapointe, Curator, Archives
Graphic design: David Martin

Download documents

Press release (PDF)
Press release (WORD)

Press images

Object photographs
Exhibition views
Portrait of Michaëlle Sergile