Nicole Gingras - Robert-Forget Award 2026

Beyond this remarkable support for artists, video artists, and filmmakers, Nicole Gingras—as an educator—has expanded and transformed how video art, experimental cinema, moving-image installation art, and sound practices are perceived in Québec. By articulating and activating the concepts of “exploratory cinema” and “exploratory forms,” she has cultivated an approach attentive to the hybridity of artistic practices, enabling unprecedented modes of circulation among works. Attuned to both the works themselves and their audiences, her curatorial vision has fostered new publics, encouraging intimate modes of reception shaped through resonance and careful assemblage.

What’s more, Nicole Gingras’s deep commitment to “accompaniment,” a term she especially favours, is reflected in her work with cultural organizations devoted to dissemination and publishing. As a contributor, initiator, and board member across numerous institutions, this leading figure in Québec art and cinema has directly enriched the vitality of the cultural ecosystem through both project-based and long-term collaborations with a wide range of organizations and initiatives. These include galleries, museums, and festivals such as Vidéographe, Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV), the Cinémathèque québécoise, la lumière collective, TraficArt, Manif d’art, Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, VOX, Galerie de l’UQAM, PRIM, and Artexte. The depth and quality of her engagement reflect an exceptional sensitivity and generosity, which have left their mark on the history of moving images in Québec. For all these reasons, the jury is proud to award the 2026 Robert-Forget Prize to Nicole Gingras.

— Rachel Echenberg, Mathieu Li-Goyette et Maude Trottier, jury members

Robert-Forget Award

The Robert-Forget Award was be presented to Nicole Gingras during a private evening held at Cinéma Moderne. As part of the event, guests had the opportunity to discover Correspondences and Confidences, a program curated by the curator and created especially for the occasion. The program is now available on Vithèque.

Created in 2021 as part of the celebration of Vidéographe’s 50th anniversary, the Robert-Forget Award is named after the artist-run center's founder. The award is presented every two years to a Quebec artist, curator, or researcher who has made an outstanding contribution to the development of the moving image in Quebec.

Winner’s biographical note

Nicole Gingras is an independent curator, author, and editor. Her research is guided by the creative process and by notions of trace, time, and listening. Her interest in exploratory practices in cinema and video, as well as in visual arts, sound art, and kinetic art, has given rise to numerous projects—exhibitions, programmes, and publications—presented on national and international stages. She has authored many analytical texts on the moving image, photography, and sound art. For many years, her writing has favoured dialogue with artists as a mode of exchange. She maintains ongoing correspondence-conversations with various artists, sometimes resulting in publications, the most recent of which, 9 entretiens / interviews, was published in 2024. Over the years, she has collaborated with numerous museums, galleries, artist-run centres, and festivals, including the International Festival of Films on Art (Le FIFA), where she developed the FIFA Experimental section from 2003 to 2025, as well as with production and dissemination organizations such as Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV) and Vidéographe in Montréal, and VTape in Toronto.

Jury members’ biographical notes

Rachel Echenberg’s performances and videos have been presented in Quebec, across Canada, and internationally since 1992. Her videos are represented by Vidéographe in Montreal and VTape in Toronto. She is also a professor in the Visual Arts Department at Dawson College.

Mathieu Li-Goyette is Editor-in-Chief of Panorama-cinéma and Executive Director of the Montreal Critics’ Week. He is also a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, where he specializes in comics studies.

Maude Trottier is Editor-in-Chief of Hors champ and a project manager in history and heritage at the Société d’histoire / Centre d’archives de Laval. She is also the author of Sous le figuier (Moult Éditions, 2022), a narrative poem illustrated by painter Cécile Ronc.