Nicole Gingras - Robert-Forget Award 2026

We first met in 1993, during the eighth edition of the Cent jours d’art contemporain in Montréal. At the time, I was the exhibition gallery technician. My job was to make sure the works—paintings, installations, sculptures, photographs—were not touched, moved, or, worse still, damaged by visitors. Meanwhile, Nicole Gingras was the curator of Donigan Cumming’s exhibition Détournements de l’image.

Media arts were then an entirely foreign world to me. My training and skills had led me to work as a production assistant on a number of Québécois, European, and American film shoots, while devoting myself to projects in screenwriting and literature, from short stories to novels. The leap into the world of contemporary art was dizzying, but above all destabilizing. I was utterly lost in this unfamiliar field, with all my bearings failing me. Donigan Cumming’s exhibition was my first real contact with this world.

I was confronted by photographs that at first struck me as provocative and aggressive, but Nicole Gingras’s words gradually brought me to grasp their deeper essence. A door was opening onto a different way of seeing things, of perceiving them, of analyzing them. Nicole remains the finest encounter of that major artistic event. She cast a kind of spell over me—her presence, her personality, her way of thinking and of saying things with complete simplicity, sharing with me, ever so deftly, the findings of her research. There has always been in her a discretion and an elegance that make our conversations easy and pleasant, carried by a profound knowledge of art and deep thoughtfulness. That initial meeting left its mark; it laid the first stone of a precious collaboration to come. I had no idea then that, a few years later, I would once again find myself working alongside Nicole Gingras. 

January 1999. I was starting at Vidéographe as a distribution assistant. Jean Mailloux was then the coordinator of that division, and Michel Desjardins the organization’s director. It was at the start of that same year that Nicole Gingras and I crossed paths again, laying a second stone that would, ever so gently, consolidate our collaboration. My contract was initially meant to last only six months. It stretched to twenty-three years. Over nearly a quarter of a century—through the works of the collection—an unbreakable trust developed among the curator, Vidéographe, and me.

Vidéographe’s catalogue holds more than two thousand titles, most of them experimental—often exploratory, surprising, and diverse, from here and abroad. Titles to discover and rediscover. Having traded the title of assistant for that of distribution coordinator, my work now consisted in ensuring the works reached audiences, and in accompanying and supporting artists in their practice. Nicole Gingras knew how to bring the collection to the fore through the creation of numerous programs, keeping the works from sinking into oblivion, from dying—letting them live again—breathing new life into them through her thoughtful, organic programs. In these programs, a fusion of her thinking took place; her fine, precise analysis of image and sound, along with the pathways she proposed, led viewers to see the works in her selection differently. To question them differently. Through our many exchanges, I was able to develop my analysis, my perception of things, my feel for the unsuspected power of certain works—by looking well beyond images, well beyond sound. Thanks to her, I learned to see what was not shown, to hear sounds that went unheard, to rethink what lay beyond the frame, to recognize the power of the invisible… beneath the real.

When we think of the independent programmers and curators who enrich the world of media arts, we inevitably think of Nicole Gingras. Her many and abundant curatorial projects, her apt and precise interventions, her analytical writings, and her skillfully conducted interviews place her at the forefront of our minds. Over more than thirty years, she has visibly developed and deepened her own reflection on the moving image—and has generously shared its fruits with us.

Crafting a program is an art in itself. The choice of videos, their length, the order of presentation, the genre… Nothing can be left to chance. I have lost count of the screenings bearing Nicole Gingras’s signature that I have attended. She has been, in a way, a guide. I was able to refine my questioning of how a program is built: how to design it, how to construct it, and how to speak about it. I had, in effect and unknowingly, received an education. I aspired only to become a better viewer, a better listener. Nicole Gingras opened the way for me and guided me. She was a model, a beacon.

The earliest videos in Vidéographe’s catalogue date from the seventies. The collection has grown over the decades and continues to do so. It is often said—and rightly so—that far too many works sink into oblivion, stigmatized over trivial details such as their year of production, the dated stamp of their era. They are prisoners of their decade. To know how to spot them, to select them, to set them within a coherent whole, to create a dialogue among them, to give them a different—even unprecedented—meaning, is in a way to breathe new momentum into them, to offer the viewer another way of seeing, to provoke inquiry, to awaken renewed interest in the artist’s work. Some videos have the power to renew themselves endlessly under the viewer’s gaze; others need our eyes to be nudged toward them. That, to my mind, is the curator’s work. A work exists when it is looked at, when one lingers over and with it. Vidéographe’s collection is enriched each year by new videos, by new creators. And so, on a number of occasions, I sought out Nicole Gingras’s expertise, reaching for her informed opinion on certain productions, or on the body of work of this or that artist. Sometimes a few details or a few leads were all I needed to better grasp the essence of a previously hermetic—even enigmatic, inaccessible—body of work, or to propose a piece that fit the theme of a program in the making. These exchanges also let me deepen my reflection on certain works, thanks to her astute comments and invaluable clues that eased their assessment. 

For over two decades, Nicole Gingras single-handedly shouldered the experimental section of the FIFA, presenting us with programs stamped by her vision of things, by her ever-subtle analysis. Countless exchanges took place with video artists in attendance, guided interviews, raising a wealth of questions about the work’s various meanings, about what emanates from it, hidden within or between the images, in the sounds, as in the silences. Fertile ground for perception, reflection, questioning, analysis, discovery. How many works were screened more than once, but in different programs, interacting with those chosen alongside them, offering a new interpretation or prompting a fresh way of seeing! Nicole Gingras taught me this way of seeing. Knowing how to look, knowing how to listen. Seeing sounds, hearing images. Bursting open the limits of the frame or drawing them tighter, digging between the images, diving into the silences.

There is no denying that Nicole Gingras captivated her audience with the many programs she presented in the experimental section of the FIFA. I attended every one of these events in the spirit of taking part in a master class. I knew full well that, once again, I would be swept up by the honed direction of her thinking, her careful observations. There, too, I found a faithful and devoted audience. I was glad to see a community light up, eager to make new discoveries, to revisit certain works from a different angle, to detect and explore the pathways she laid out. Through her eclectic compositions, she secured the endurance of Vidéographe’s catalogue by featuring its works in them time and again. This made it possible to set free the richness nestled within Vidéographe’s collection.

If a work’s power remains buried within itself, bringing the viewer to grasp that intangible notion is a power in its own right. This is Nicole Gingras’s natural gift. If a work is not seen, it does not exist; if a work is not spoken of, it does not exist. Its birth—and rebirth—into the world arises from its very essence. One need only let it unfold before oneself… connect with it, open the lines of communication. It will yield its secrets. A curator’s excellence lies in setting off the mechanism of this unfolding, and Nicole Gingras does so exceptionally, embodying it masterfully. Even today, I remain insatiable—ravenous, even, to feed my senses on her future programming.