Plein sud éditions and the Galerie de l'Université de Montréal are pleased to invite you to the launch of the publication Chih-Chien Wang, Residues, a monograph co-published by Plein sud éditions and EXPRESSION, Centre d'exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe, available in bookstores from May 14, 2026 and in the Plein sud éditions online shop.
The launch of this publication takes place as part of the exhibition Chih-Chien Wang. Archéologie de l'infime / Archaeology of Insignificance presented at the Galerie de l'Université de Montréal.
Chih-Chien Wang. Residues
Bilingual French-English edition
Hardcover and exposed-spine binding
Format: 20.3 x 25.7 cm
Featuring texts by Katrie Chagnon, Céline Huyghebaert, and Ariane De Blois, as well as an interview conducted by Sylvain Campeau.
Regular price: $70
Launch price: $67
Launch venue
Galerie de l’Université de Montréal
2940, ch. de la Côte-Saint-Catherine,
Pavillon de la faculté de l’aménagement
Room 0056
This work is a co-publication by Plein sud, centre d’exposition en art actuel in Longueuil, and EXPRESSION, Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe. It was produced by Plein sud éditions and directed by Ariane De Blois, Artistic Director of Plein sud from 2020 to 2024, and curator of contemporary art at the Musée d’art de Joliette since 2024.
The launch of this publication takes place in conjunction with the exhibition Chih-Chien Wang. Archéologie de l’infime / Archaeology of Insignificance presented at the Galerie de l’Université de Montréal until May 30th.
Plein sud, centre d’exposition en art actuel in Longueuil, and EXPRESSION, Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe, warmly thank the Galerie de l’Université de Montréal for hosting this launch.
Chih-Chien Wang is represented by Galerie Pierre-François Ouellette in Montreal.
A Practice at the Crossroads of Documentary and Fiction
Since arriving in Montreal from Taiwan twenty years ago, Chih-Chien Wang has established himself as one of the most distinctive artistic voices of his generation through his photographs, video works, and installations. His work, situated at the intersection of documentary and fiction, explores themes of identity, exile, and memory, and questions with rare sensitivity the relationships we maintain with others and with the natural world. A keen observer of his surroundings, Wang has the ability to uncover poetry in the interstices of everyday life and to elevate what might, at first glance, appear entirely ordinary. His works linger on elements that, concealed within the turbulence of contemporary life, tend to escape us. They invite us to contemplate, to slow down, to attend to whispers and silences, and compel us, inevitably, toward a deeper reflection on the meaning of life. How do the traces of our past (personal as much as collective) shape our present and our sense of what lies ahead?
Trained initially as a documentary filmmaker in Taiwan, Wang turned to photography upon settling in Montreal, making image-making a means of familiarizing himself with an initially foreign place. This attentive practice, close in spirit to a phenomenological stance, runs through his work as a whole: whether in his still-life series featuring tropical fruits (which he himself describes as cognitive self-portraits), his relational projects documenting spaces inhabited by others, or his performative videos exploring the construction of identity and the mechanisms of memory and forgetting, Wang continually seeks to establish common ground from which to enter into relation with the world and with others. His work has earned him the Prix Louis-Comtois, awarded by the City of Montreal and the AGAC, in 2020, as well as the Canada Council for the Arts Photography Prize (Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography) in 2017, two distinctions that attest to the recognition his practice has garnered within the contemporary art community.
A Publication Form That Reflects the Artist’s Approach
This 340-page publication sets itself apart through its form, conceived in keeping with Wang’s own practice. Rather than following the conventional monograph structure, chronological and primarily text-driven, Residues takes certain formal liberties in order to offer an embodied understanding of the artist’s practice, rather than a strictly intellectual perspective.
The publication takes the form of two volumes housed in an elegant slipcase: one devoted to texts, the other to images. Designed to be read separately or together according to each reader’s preferences, the two volumes encourage unexpected encounters and free association between the writings and the works. The 150 photographic reproductions gathered in the image volume were selected intuitively, drawing from different bodies of work to create a renewed, poetic reading experience that echoes the sensory dimension of Wang’s practice itself. Rather than exhibition documentation, it is the works themselves that take centre stage, enabling an intimate engagement with the artist’s practice.
Three Texts, Three Perspectives
The text volume brings together three contributions of different genres, each approaching the richness and complexity of Wang’s work in its own way.
Katrie Chagnon, associate professor in the art history departments at UQAM and Université Laval, and editor-in-chief of the cultural magazine Spirale since 2021, opens the volume with an essay titled Chih-Chien Wang: In Search of Shifting Ground. Drawing on a phenomenological approach, Chagnon explores the quest for belonging, spatial, temporal, and identitary, that underlies the artist’s practice. She examines how the recurring motif of water evokes a Benjaminian image of origin as something irreducible to rootedness, and considers how imagination and the notion of becoming are mobilized in Wang’s work to explore an existence woven from affects and multiple interactions.
Céline Huyghebaert, artist and writer, recipient of the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2019, contributes an original fiction text composed in response to Wang’s works. This literary piece extends, on a formal level, the invitation to free association that runs throughout the publication, offering entry into the artist’s universe through a sensory and narrative mode rather than through analysis.
Finally, an interview conducted by Sylvain Campeau, poet, art critic, essayist, and curator of some forty exhibitions, gives the artist direct voice, offering readers privileged access to his own thinking about his trajectory and the enduring questions that run through his practice.
