To All the Unnamed Women by Michaëlle Sergile

Exploring the relationship between history and archival violence

The McCord Stewart Museum presents To All the Unnamed Women by Michaëlle Sergile, on view through January 12, 2025. Combining archival records and fiction, this exhibition traces the origins of the first collective created by Black women in Quebec, the Coloured Women’s Club of Montreal (CWCM). Drawing on the concept of critical fabulation theorized by American author Saidiya Hartman, Michaëlle Sergile explores the relationship between history and archival violence.

The CWCM
The CWCM – which has been the subject of several of Sergile’s research projects – was founded in 1902 by Black women to help migrant families find housing and access financial support. It was created at a time when the names of Black women were often absent from Montreal archives. The McCord Stewart Museum’s Artist-in-Residence program allowed the artist to deepen her historical knowledge of the organization and the women behind it by exploring the Museum’s collections. Most importantly, it’s an opportunity to introduce the public to an organization that played a key role in the development of Little Burgundy. The exhibition also invites visitors to reflect on systemic erasure and, at the same time, on the context in which these women lived. As Michaëlle Sergile explains: “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.”

Critical analysis of the collections
This project was produced for the Artist-in-Residence program, which invites artists to take a critical, conceptual look at the McCord Stewart Museum’s collections. It was an opportunity for Michaëlle Sergile to explore the Museum’s Photography collection in search of images of Black women who lived between 1870 and 1910. The artist observed that, regardless of their social status, the vast majority of these women remained anonymous in the rare evidence preserved of their existence, making it difficult to identify them today.

Michaëlle Sergile

Weaving archives
For Michaëlle Sergile, creation is a way of confronting the limitations of archives, of imagining and fully recognizing the lives of individuals of whom we have only a few traces. Weaving was an obvious choice as a medium for expressing the realities of the Black women featured in the exhibition, as many parallels can be drawn between the themes addressed and weaving. Often associated with handicrafts, this medium is still rarely used by artists. As proof, only 3 computer-assisted Jacquard looms – used by Michaëlle to create her works –are available in Montreal.

“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. I felt that the medium of weaving itself was being sidelined. I liked that the word métissage (“racial mix”) contains tissage (“weaving”), just like text and textile.”

For her first solo exhibition in a museum, the artist has created 7 original tapestries on Jacquard looms. Three of them reconstruct images selected from the Museum’s Photography collection, and four illustrate portraits of CWCM members. Archival photographs and objects from the Museum collections complete the installation.

“After Karen Tam’s exhibition devoted to the Chinese-Montreal community, the McCord Stewart Museum’s Artist-in-Residence program now gives Michaëlle Sergile a platform to highlight the role of Afro-descendant women and community organization in our society, and an opportunity to take a critical look at the silences in our collections. This type of project is essential to the Museum’s decolonization process,” says Anne Eschapasse, President and CEO.

“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. It’s a great way to create a link with people who once existed but are no longer with us today, to give a sense of continuity to their discourse. 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,”says Michaëlle Sergile.

For opening hours and ticket prices, visit: www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca