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About the Fair

Plural celebrates the best of contemporary art in Canada. Formerly known as the Papier Art Fair, Plural is organized by the Contemporary Art Galleries Association and welcomes 49 galleries from 8 Canadian cities.

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VIP Programming

The artworks and virtual fair will be open to the public for free from April 21 to May 7, 2023.
For VIP ticket holders, access begins at noon on April 14. Get your tickets!

Create an account to access the virtual fair!

With your VIP account, get an exclusive preview of the artworks here, on plural.art, before the official opening of the fair on April 21. To log in, enter the VIP number on your  VIP ticket. Enjoy your visit!

Congratulations, your details have been forwarded to the exhibitor.

We can pass on your name and email address to the owners of this gallery so that they can contact you in the future. These communications will inform you of the latest works of the artists they represent and gallery events.

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by Danica Pinteric                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
*Danica Pinteric is an author, editor and curator based in Toronto, Canada.*

**National Bank Private Banking 1859** is proud to partner with artist Rihab Essayh to present *The Hymn of the Warriors of Love* at Plural.

Amid the frenzy of booth displays and conversations at Plural, multidisciplinary artist Rihab Essayh’s installation, *The Hymn of the Warriors of Love* (2022-), injects a moment of peace into the fair’s buzzing atmosphere. Through a combination of video, sound, drawing, and textile works, Essayh's project proposes a utopian near-future where visitors can rest and recharge. In a culture that often prioritizes productivity over collective care, Essayh's hypothetical world provides a refreshing alternative that emphasizes community and recuperation. With its soothing environment, *The Hymn of the Warriors of Love* invites its audience to shed everyday stress and distractions and redirect attention toward our relationships to ourselves and others. Essayh’s approach is informed by the theoretical foundations of *radical softness* and Afrofuturism, fusing ideas from both to define her signature ethos of *soft futurism* — a sensibility that uncompromisingly imagines new and equitable futures that identifies vulnerability and interdependence as pillars of collective liberation and wellbeing.

Envisioned as an oasis of connection and tenderness, *The Hymn of the Warriors of Love* responds to feelings of isolation and turmoil sparked by the pandemic lockdowns and returns focus to embodied encounters with art. The installation’s serene pink and orange gradient curtains, reminiscent of calming sunsets, offer an opportunity to “bathe” in colour, providing a therapeutic immersion into warm hues that recall the sense of peace the artist experienced on routine walks at the day’s end in 2021. Essayh’s sensuous palette and ethereal vocals evoke soft aesthetics found in online communities that reclaim femininity as a critical and meaningful avenue of expression. The Hymn of the Warriors of Love also traverses visual cultures, drawing inspiration from Moroccan Fantasia cavalry regalia in the costuming for the video and live performance given by Natalie Fasheh on the opening night of the fair. 

*Come stay with us dear*

*come lie here*

*we miss you*

*we haven't seen you in a while*¹

*The Hymn of the Warriors of Love* is anchored by its enchanting chorus, the lyrics of which emerged from a collaboration between Essayh and Iranian-Canadian poet Mojeanne Behzadi. Essayh conceptualizes this song as an offering to the audience — a gesture that disrupts and brings nuance to conventional forms of exchange and transaction in the art fair context. Accepting Essayh’s gift is a deliberate process of re-attunement to the hymn’s gentle rhythms, finding its resonance in their own bodies through the radical act of slowing down.


¹Excerpt of lyrics from *The Hymn of the Warriors of Love* written by Rihab Essayh in collaboration with Mojeanne Behzadi.

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On receiving Rihab Essayh’s soft futurism at Plural 2023

Join [Border Crossings](https://bordercrossingsmag.com/) at Plural 2023 as Editor Meeka Walsh selects artists’ works from participating galleries at the festival site.

[Read the article on Border Crossings website.](https://bordercrossingsmag.com/news/entry/plural-2023)

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Border Crossings Editor’s Picks 

Paul Hamelin and Danielle Lysaught with their first acquisition at Papier 11, April 2011, *Barcelona*, by Francine Simonin at Galerie Lacerte. Photo credit: Martine Paquet whose memory we wish to salute for her immense generosity towards the beginners that we were.

***
*Danielle Lysaught and Paul Hamelin are art collectors and co-owners of Projet Casa.*

During our first visit to the Montreal Contemporary Art Fair (then called Papier) in April 2011, we were fairly new to contemporary visual art. Our shared interest in this milieu had been solidified by our first gallery visits the year before. It was with a willingness to learn and understand that we made our first steps in the fair!

The quantity, diversity and (surely) quality of the works presented impressed us. The first year we acquired 2 medium size artworks, including the one pictured above. The following year, 4 pieces... then we lost count, perhaps it is exponential? All kidding aside, we tried to make at least one acquisition per year at the fair, in parallel with our gallery discoveries throughout the year.

This learning process has continued slowly, year after year, through meetings, readings, curiosity and a lot of fun in learning about this stimulating and exciting world.

Today we are delighted to partner with the Plural Fair for the presentation of special projects that allow for more elaborate or installative works to be exhibited in a dedicated space, without commercial limitations. The collaboration, which began in 2018, continues in parallel with our other project in Montreal, Projet Casa on Avenue de L'Esplanade, an exhibition space that we share in our home in order to allow early career artists, not represented in galleries or for unseen works, not suitable for gallery presentation, to be shown to the public. After almost 15 years, we can say that our encounter with contemporary visual art has enriched and changed the course of our lives. The fair, now Plural, has contributed greatly to our journey.

This year, we even venture to make suggestions from the catalog of works presented by the exhibitors (those available on the site on April 17). We have selected 10 affordable works - most of them between $500 and $1,500 - that could have been our first purchases (even now if you don't hurry!). 

We would also like to share a few tips that have been helpful to us:

- Choose pieces that challenge you. Beautiful works are pleasing, while those holding a mystery, a tension, evolve according to our perception over time and allow for the discovery of new layers of meaning progressively.
- Learn about the artist, check out their website or Instagram page to see the rest of their work and find out more about their process and journey. Choose an artist that you will be interested in keeping up with through the years.
- Ask the gallery owner or the artist questions about the genesis of the work, the context of its creation, the techniques used, the materials, etc. Ask if it is possible to meet the artist. The artist's point of view enriches and completes your appreciation of an artwork and these are often meaningful and thought provoking exchanges.
- Dare the 3D, three-dimensional works undeniably increase the interest and change the way we, as viewers, relate to pictorial pieces (drawings, paintings,...). Do not hesitate to turn up the volume!

With our best wishes for a very fruitful visit in discoveries and encounters of artworks, exhibitors and projects at Plural 2023,

Danielle et Paul
***


      







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