Virtual exhibition: David Altmejd. Agora

David Altmejd. Agora is the first virtual exhibition to date on the artist’s work. Designed to ensure wider dissemination of his heads and busts created over the last thirty years, it follows on from the exhibition of the same name presented at the Galerie de l’UQAM from November 7, 2025 to January 24, 2026 and the catalogue published on the same occasion. In the agora representing the concept of the exhibition, he displays independent busts and heads that seem linked by an unlikely genealogy, a filiation asking to be deciphered. Forming a remarkable assembly of mythological and real characters, spiritual and terrestrial figures, as well as human and non-human creatures, this body of work reveals the extent to which Altmejd brings about a metamorphosis of the living, induced by creative and unconscious forces, to construct a world.

About the Artist

Born in Montreal in 1974, David Altmejd lives and works in Los Angeles. Holding visual arts degrees from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Columbia University (New York), he is one of the most renowned Quebecois artists of his generation, both nationally and internationally. In 2007, Altmejd represented Canada at the Venice Biennale with an exhibition curated by Louise Déry. Since then, he has presented exhibitions in some of the world’s most prestigious institutions. His work is in many private and public collections, including those of UQAM, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (Brussels), and Musée d’art moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Luxembourg). Altmejd won the Sobey Art Award in 2009 and was made a Compagnon des arts et des lettres du Québec in 2015. He is represented by Xavier Hufkens (Brussels), White Cube (London and New York), and David Kordansky (Los Angeles).
davidaltmejd.net

About the Curator

Louise Déry (PhD in art history) is the director of the Galerie de l’UQAM since 1997. Previously, she worked as a curator for the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and was the director of the Musée de Rimouski. She has curated a hundred exhibitions and edited as many publications in Canada and abroad featuring, in addition to David Altmejd, Nancy Spero, Dominique Blain, Sarkis, Françoise Sullivan, Michael Snow, Jean-Luc Nancy, Enrique Ramírez, Saodat Ismailova and Emmanuelle Léonard, to name just a few. The awards and distinctions she has received include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence (2007), the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2015), the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France (2017), the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec (2021) and the Ordre national du Québec (2023).