Yann Pocreau and Claudine Khelil with installation “LINX” by Patrick Martinez at Centre Clark. Photo by M-KOS
Montreal/Brooklyn is the project title for a visual art exchange between two North American cities of the same name, initiated by artist-run centre Clark. Their first public event kicked off in October from Montreal to then reach Brooklyn in January 2013 and altogether showcase 40 artist works within 16 institutions. More than two years in the making, the painstaking efforts to make this project happen have finally paid off with excitement from the public as well as the press. M-KOS interviewed Clark coordinators Claudine Khelil and Yann Pocreau, to grasp an insider’s view of Montreal/Brooklyn.
M-KOS [MKOS]: A few weeks have passed already since the start of Montreal/Brooklyn in October. How was the public’s reaction so far?
Yann Pocreau [YP]: It’s been great. We had a lot of media coverage and people are passing on the buzz. We didn’t really expect that. We even had some coverage in France.
MKOS: That’s fantastic. Can you tell us how this project started out?
Claudine Khelil [CK]: We were in New York visiting some galleries, and we approached one of them whose work we really liked. First we proposed the gallery director of Parker’s Box to do some exchanges with Clark. Then after a long discussion we started talking about possibilities and decided to go bigger, to do an exchange project with a substantial amount of structure.
Continue reading “Montréal / Brooklyn – in conversation with Claudine Khelil and Yann Pocreau, Montréal coordinators.”
