‘To All the Unnamed Women’: New exhibit at Montreal’s McCord Stewart Museum

The McCord Stewart Museum will present a new exhibition starting Sept. 13 until Jan. 12 2025.

‘To All the Unnamed Women’ was created by Michaëlle Sergile and it traces the origins of the first collective created by Black women in Quebec – the Coloured Women’s Club of Montreal (CWCM).

The CWCM was founded in 1902 by Black women to help migrant families find housing and access financial support.

Michaëlle Sergile completed the year-long Artist-in-Residence program. She says, “I think there’s something really beautiful for me to be here as well because when I was studying in different universities, I didn’t have this opportunity to see another Black artist in Montreal representing other Black women or having that as a subject.

Taking a look at the lives of Black women in Montreal between 1870 and 1910, there is a blend of archival sources and fiction with an exhibit at the McCord Museum called ‘To All the Unnamed Women’.

It chronicles the origins of the first organization in Quebec to be created by Black women, the Coloured Women’s Club of Montreal. The exhibit explores a relationship between history and archival violence.

Sergile says, “Hopefully other artists or people that might be interested in the subject would not feel like they can’t see themselves in these institutions and see that there’s always possibilities to be exhibited here.”

Mathieu Lapointe is the Curator for the McCord Stewart Museum in Archives. He says, “With this exhibition, we hope to show that there was a strong Black presence as early as the 19th century in Montreal.

“They started building community institutions like the Colored Women’s Club.

“They started, Black people who had probably been more isolated, formerly started coming together as a community with institutions such as the Coloured Women’s Club, the Union United Church.

“And so it’s really the birth of a true Black community in Montreal that is documented in this exhibition.”

For her first solo exhibition in a museum, Michaëlle Sergile created seven original tapestries on Jacquard looms. Three of them reconstruct images selected from the Museum’s Photography collection, and four illustrate portraits of Coloured Women’s Club of Montreal (CWCM) members

Sergile says, “I was able to talk to different curators here that have different expertise and to ask questions that I was not necessarily able to ask before because I wasn’t in a context where I could, and having this possibility was something really important for me, but also to showcase this exhibition here.

“I think being in a museum in general, like I said before, it’s a space where people come to get more information, to understand a bit more the history of different cities.

“So being in a museum is also a way to make sure that whatever we’re trying to say, people will still have this information and will be able to go home and just think okay I saw this, what can I learn from that? What can I maybe teach someone else about, maybe, this subject?

Sergile’s exhibition explores the relationship between history and violence.

‘To All the Unnamed Women’ doesn’t simply commemorate the past but offers a profound reflection on the creation of memories and the importance of identification. Through archives, I can say what I can’t always say,” said Sergile.

Sergile is an independent artist and curator who works with post-colonial archives dating from the 1950s to the modern day.

Her goal is to understand and rewrite the history of Black communities — more specifically women’s history, through weaving.

Sergile said weaving allows her to explore the links between gender and ethnicity.

“I think there’s something beautiful and powerful about thinking of all the people who have had these thoughts before you and being able to associate them with the period you’re living in,” she said.

The exhibition features seven original tapestries on Jacquard looms. Three of the tapestries display images from the museum’s photography collection and four of the tapestries showcase portraits of the CWCM members.

The McCord Stewart Museum’s Artist-in-Residence program allowed Sergile to deepen her knowledge of the CWCM and the women behind it.

“By celebrating both these nameless women and those who created the Coloured Women’s Club, the exhibition serves as a space for reflection, inviting the public to participate in reconstructing their stories,” explained Sergile.

The artist was able to explore the museum’s photography collection with images of Black women from 1870 to 1910. She discovered that despite their different social classes, most of the women remained anonymous, making it difficult to identify them today.

“When I started working with textiles, I realized there was a disconnect between the visual arts and craft, as if the two notions couldn’t coexist. I thought it fitted in very well with the way I conceptualized archives, because I was very interested in anything that’s put aside,” she explained.

Sergile’s work has been shown in many museums like the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, the Musée d’Art de Joliette, the Fonderie Darling, and the OFF, Biennale de Dakar, Senegal.

In 2023, she won the Visual Artist of the Year Award at the Gala Dynastie and began a residency at the Fonderie Darling.

Head to the McCord Stewart Museum to see the To All the Unnamed Women exhibit from September 13th to January 12th.