MONTREAL.- DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art and Phi present Path of Resilience, a public art project comprising three new installations by world-renowned artists Maria Hupfield, Nadia Myre, and Skawennati presented along Promenade urbaine Fleuve-Montagne, a new walkway from the Saint Lawrence River to Mount Royal. The path, a legacy project for Montreal's 375th anniversary, gives visitors an opportunity to experience the iconic heart of Montreal in a whole new way.

The specially commissioned projects reflect the vitality of the artists' creations, and through the variety of forms, their talent for creating works that stimulate both the eye and the spirit. The installations, based on the interrelated themes of time, memory, history, and affirmation and infused with the artists' Indigenous heritage, use different strategies for occupying space.

Maria Hupfield, heavily inspired by Indigenous traditions and the history of performance, has created actions and objects that mediate between the body and the natural or urban environment. Her installation KAPOW! consists of two specially designed benches that enter into a dialogue with the trees behind the Square Victoria-OACI Metro station, an area used by tourists as well as local residents and workers. The word “KAPOW” connotes action, movement, and breath. The work, with its geometric patterns that make reference to comic book speech balloons and lightning bolts, acts as a social sculpture that redefines how we interact with public spaces and the natural world.

Nadia Myre, whose multidisciplinary works revisit the personal and collective history of the political and social struggles of Indigenous peoples, chose the garden of Saint Patrick's Basilica as the site of her installation, histoire revenue. Combining sound, light, and natural materials, it evokes the tragic destiny of the historical Montreal figure associated with resistance and the fight for freedom: Marie-Josèphe Angélique, a black slave accused of having set fire to her mistress’s house and hanged in 1734.

The Mohawk artist Skawennati, known for her virtual environment films (or machinimas) that question history and our vision of the future from a feminist viewpoint and imagine greater autonomy for those who create that future, founded her installation on the Haudenasaunee creation story that served as the basis for her film She Falls for Ages. The Celestial Tree takes the form of a road sign, inviting people to climb to the top of Mount Royal, the work invites pedestrians/spectators to focus their attention on the world above, and imagine what kind of utopia might be awaiting them.