To All the Unnamed Women

The Coloured Women’s Club of Montreal – 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 Museum’s Artist-in-Residence program allowed Michaëlle 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.”

This project was produced for the Artist-in-Residence program, which invites artists to take a critical, conceptual look at the 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.

Michaëlle 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.

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.”

Project management
Caroline Truchon, Project Manager, Exhibitions

Curating
Mathieu Lapointe, Curator, Archives

Graphic design
David Martin

McCord Stewart Museum team 

John Gouws, Chief Technician, Exhibitions
Mélissa Jacques, Technician, Exhibitions
Olivier LeBlanc-Roy, Technician, Exhibitions
Patrick Migneault, Technician, Exhibitions 

Guislaine Lemay, conservatrice, Curator, Material Culture
Zoë Tousignant, Curator, Photography  

Caterina Florio, Head, Conservation
Sonia Kata, Conservator  

Geneviève Déziel, Cataloguing Coordinator, Collections Management
Camille Deshaies-Forget, Assistant, Collections Management
Josianne Venne, Senior Technician, Collections Management
Karine Rousseau, Head, Collections Management
Ana Prasser, Archivist
Anne-Frédérique Beaulieu-Plamondon, Officer, Digital Outreach, Collections and Exhibitions
Roger Aziz, Photographer 

Leila Afriat, Officer, Community Relations, Education
Elysa Lachapelle, Project Manager, Education, Community Engagement and Cultural Programs 

Philippe Bergeron, Officer, Digital Engagement 

External team

Editing and translation
Pascale Guertin
Judith Terry

Graphic production
Graphiscan

Installation
Espace Montage inc.