MTL Nord
Victor Arroyo
November 28, 2016 — February 1, 2017
+15 Window Exhibition
Exhibition Description
On August 9, 2008, Freddy Villanueva was shot and killed by police officer Jean-Loup Lapointe at the Henri-Bourassa Arena in Montreal Nord. Riots broke out the next day and the Montreal Nord Affaire social movement was born. The killing of Freddy Villanueva brought visibility to the current tactics of police surveillance, institutional power asymmetries, and racial profiling. Victor Arroyo documented the Montreal Nord grassroots movement and their sites of resistance with a surveillance camera in order to rupture the unidirectional nature of the gaze. This ethnographic study examines site specificity as a complex reflection of the unstable relationship between location and identity in urban landscapes.
Biography
Victor Arroyo is an artist, social activist and researcher working with experimental and documentary practices in video art and installation. His practice is an exploration of the mechanisms of exclusion, representation and power, while addressing systems of delimitation or distinction associated to assertions of power and identity. He is currently a PhD student in Humanities, Geography and Anthropology at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture in Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.