Exhibition – 30 Years of Asia without Borders
30 Years of Asia Without Borders – Fields of Mirrors is a dive into the archives of the Accès Asie Festival, tracing 30 years of festivities, not to be missed!
The exhibition is open from May 3 to June 14, 2025.
Description
In collaboration with OBORO, the Festival Accès Asie will celebrate its 30th anniversary with an interactive exhibition in May 2025. Designed by Khosro Berahmandi and Sarah-Yang Baud, this exhibition, presented from May 3rd to June 14th, traces the festival’s rich history through a multidisciplinary approach, featuring archival images and an immersive video projection that illustrate its evolution. Visitors will be invited on a visual and historical journey, exploring key moments and major successes in the festival’s history. Additionally, an interactive Asian map will be available for the public to leave a word, a drawing, or an intention… of origin. A bibliographic section of the exhibition will also allow visitors to explore documents from the festival’s 30 years.
Opening hours
Opening on May 3 at 3PM.
The exhibition is open from May 3 to June 14:
Tuesdays: by appointment
Wednesdays to Saturdays: 12 PM to 5 PM
Thursdays: 12 PM to 7 PM
Acknowledgements
Festival Accès Asie extends its heartfelt thanks to its growing community for their continued support over the past thirty years. We have been fortunate to be surrounded by incredible artists, inspiring collaborators, and community members who have helped shape and sustain the festival throughout its history.
We express our deep gratitude for the opportunity to live on the unceded territory known as Tiohtiá:ke-Mooniyang-Montreal, which belongs to the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, the original custodians of these lands and waters. We acknowledge this with respect and sincere appreciation.
Media
Khosro Berahmandi
This presentation of Khosro and his work is written by art critic Rajath Suri.
Multidisciplinary artist Khosro Berahmandi, of Iranian origin, arrived in Canada in 1983 at the age of 22. He currently lives and works in Tiohtiá:ke-Mooniyang-Montreal. Khosro first studied visual arts at Concordia University in Montreal and then at the University of Paris VIII. A prolific and renowned artist, he has produced over fifty group and solo exhibitions to date, as part of projects carried out in Canada, Europe and the United States.
Khosro is the recipient of the Charles Biddle Award in 2022 for his contribution to the cultural and artistic development of Quebec society. For the past 25 years, he has been actively involved in the life of Festival Accès Asie, a multidisciplinary arts festival based in Montreal that promotes Asian arts, cultures and stories. He has worked for the festival as curator, general director and artistic director since 1997. Khosro left his position in 2023 to focus on his artistic projects.
Khosro Berahmandi’s art embodies a microcosmic singularity, derived from a personal mythology echoing the pictorial approach of Iranian miniature painting iconography. His creative trajectory delineates an exquisite aesthetic embodied in the perpetual labyrinth of aggregated and enigmatic beings, a semi-figurative “bestiary” that challenges and fascinates the gaze of the spectators, as the predominant aesthetic aspects born of Eurocentrism pale in contrast to his signature innovations in leitmotif, poetic symbolism and robustness of individual composition. The successive series, whether on wood or paper, evoke the sublime quality of a personal mythology that exceeds conventional iconography. The works have a universal appeal in their ambiguity of immediate reference, as if echoing a lost text once spoken and now whispered.
In the renderings of his poetic imagination, the artist gravitates, physically and psychically, in the detail: the meticulousness of the line, the intensity of the composition and the proximity of the material. A detail that expresses a simultaneous spiritual ascension towards an intuitive augury of the sacred with the anonymity of a silent shaman. Once connected to Khosro’s images, we suddenly encounter a personal cosmology that turned out to be the visual itinerary of a self-possessed journey, a tributary that was deeply inspired by various convergences, intersections and sources.
The four-decade exile from his native Iran, where he has never returned since, may suggest the itinerancy of a sensitive and serene individual, dispossessed in some way. However, without diaspora or nostalgia, the artist has embarked on an individual path of wandering that leads him towards the image of what is becoming his own territory.
His creations silently testify to the singular and subjective reality taken in hand, timeless and resonant with visual components of universal themes. They suggest, through lucid speculations, that as iconography fails and the historicism of art collapses, we might come closer to a reality that reconciles the animal and the vegetable with the human.
The hidden cartography in Khosro Berahmandi’s dense but brilliant compositions echoes the eternal threads as the fabric of his singular sublime cosmos is woven where his brushes reign.
Sarah-Yang Baud
Fueled by an insatiable curiosity and a passion for art in all its forms, Sarah-Yang Baud, also known as Gotaname, is a multidisciplinary artist in constant exploration. Of Chinese descent and raised in France, she first discovered music through her piano studies at the conservatory.
Later, her love for aesthetics and creation led her to applied arts, which she studied for three years. But for her, art is not confined to a single medium—it is movement, sound, and image. Since arriving in Montreal in October 2023, she has been building bridges between disciplines, cultures, and communities. Her energy finds expression through waacking, a dance where elegance meets power.
Committed both on stage and behind the scenes, she plays a key role at the Festival Accès Asie, helping to showcase Asian artistic voices. Her involvement on the board of directors of MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) further reflects her dedication to supporting diversity and innovation in the arts.
Always in motion, Gotaname continues to carve her path, constantly seeking to make the space between image, sound, and the moving body vibrate.
OBORO
OBORO is an artist-run center dedicated to the presentation and production of current practices in visual, media and digital arts.
OBORO’s field of action covers visual and media arts, new technologies, performing arts and emerging practices. The centre’s two main galleries are dedicated to the presentation of solo and group exhibitions. The New Media Lab offers a variety of services and specialized spaces for digital and media art production. The multifunctional studios are spaces of creation and experimentation for artists who benefit from the expertise of a professional team. OBORO’s residency studio allows artists to stay for varying lengths of time, with access to the center’s facilities and services. OBORO’s programming encourages innovation, experimentation, the exchange of ideas and the sharing of knowledge.
Founded in 1982 with the conviction that the living transcultural artistic experience contributes to the betterment of humankind, OBORO’s objective is to stimulate reflection in the artistic field and in society in general, and to contribute to a culture of peace by aiming to build a more just and equitable society, while allowing room for a multiplicity of perspectives.
With
Festival Accès Asie and all the people who have made their mark on the history of the festival
