Bedtime Stories at ELLEPHANT, Montreal

By oualie frost

Bedtime Stories is a dreamscape held within a daylit room, a gathering of works that possess a sense of ephemerality despite their object permanence, and an evocation of the experience of our nighttime travels. Visitors to ELLEPHANT are even offered a pair of soft slippers and a cup of relaxing tea upon entry to help with immersion – to get ready for bed, if you will. Walls adorned with a glitchy mountain-scape and brightly coloured patterns circle several works including a bed with a quilted spread and a pregnant mannequin standing sentry. While the pieces that occupy the front desk area don’t immediately register as part of the exhibition and despite the wide variety of artists shown, the collection as a whole manages to create a strong sense of thematic cohesiveness through its reliance on dream logic.

Evergon’s Ramboy with Cockatoo, Bird Aviary, Night Stag, 1993, Polaroid

Evergon’s Ramboy with Cockatoo, Bird Aviary, Night Stag, for example, is a massive Polaroid I never imagined possible to create. At over eight feet long and taken in one shot, it depicts a nightmarishly eerie triptych of fuzzy bodies in ram masks, dark birds on a twisted mess of branches, and a dimly lit blue and green stag head. Sabrina Ratté’s Aurora is an immersive digitally-rendered liminal room-scape with waves of chromatic light crashing and spilling in as if one were drifting in REM sleep. Karin Bubaš’ Coral Rose in a Glass Jar evokes the dissociation-like state of dreams with a laser-cut rose in a jar, spread across multiple separated layers despite initially appearing as one solid piece. And Angie Quick’s Pig knows pig, highly stylised and semi-abstracted, depicts some sort of Surreal picnic. Or orgy. All are visions I can imagine seeing in my sleep given their hazy auras.

Bedtime Stories at ELLEPHANT, 2025, installation view

The centerpieces of the one-room exhibition are both Skawennati works. Quilt / Counterpointe is the iron-frame bed dressed in a comfort-evoking quilt of a mermaid and angel reaching out to each other – sky and sea in a sleepy harmonious dance. Alongside, Otsiitsakáion Cosplay Costume is a neon pink and pregnant mannequin dressed in a futuristic white gown; pregnant belly exposed and emphasized. Around their neck is a necklace holding sunflower, pumpkin, and bean seeds, as if carrying them into a future world. It is reminiscent of enslaved Africans braiding rice and grains into their hair to help sustain them in the “new world.” Nearby is Awaiting Otter, a still from one of Skawennati’s signature machinima animations featuring an otter resting on the back of a giant turtle. Given the turtle’s frequent use as a symbol of creation in First Nations’ mythology, one can connect this as well to the artist’s themes of Indigenous futurity and the creation of new worlds. All of their work in the exhibition speak to me as wishes for the coming times to be different – better and more Indigenous. They illustrate the type of optimistic stories one’s parents would tell them at bedtime.

Emmanuelle Léonard, Le livreur à bicyclette, 20:58 / Bicycle Delivery 8:58pm, 2022, heat-sensitive image, giclée print

These are just some of the many works featured in Bedtime Stories. Additional pieces by Nathalie Bujold, Rebecca Foon, Mara Korkola, Emmanuelle Léonard, JJ Levine, Shanna Strauss, and Stanley Wany also embody the essence of dreaming, both in the sense of sleepy-time visions and the projections of ambition. Bedtime stories prepare us for rest, a time for our minds to play creatively with subject matter and ideas. Bedtime Stories offers the viewer an opportunity to do the same, providing the chance to take a break and dream, gifting us a welcome escape from these nightmarish times.

Bedtime Stories continues until June 1.
ELLEPHANT: ellephant.org
The gallery is partially accessible.

oualie frost is a casual artist, writer, and activist currently based in Tiohti:áke/Mooniyang (Montréal) whose writing centers primarily around the art and experiences of Black, mixed-Black, and other racialized people, as well as loose cultural critique. They are a former founding member of the Afros in the City media collective, with writing published on various platforms, including Akimblog, the Rozsa Foundation, and Canadian Art.