My-Van Dam, Artist – Montreal
(photo: Hamza Abouelouafaa)
My-Van Dam’s artistic practice examines the transmission of intergenerational trauma and its physical and psychological impacts. She also explores embodied memory and processes of healing that foster personal and collective emancipation from oppressive systems. Her current research is grounded in somatic practices, proposing a vision of care as an interdependent and collaborative process. She holds a BFA in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal, and has had recent solo exhibitions at Diagonale and MAI – Montréal, arts interculturels, as well as a public engagement project at PHI. In 2025, she screened her first film, Connecting from the Inside Out, at the International Festival of Films on Art. Her new exhibition Holding Space opens on September 4 at Artspace in Peterborough and continues until October 31.
- Knots and abstract forms
Lately, I’ve been obsessed with knots and the abstract forms they create. I see them as ways of giving shape to different bodily and emotional states – contraction, tension, release, connection. I collect, draw, and make these forms intuitively, allowing the body to guide their transformation.
- Shades of fabric
My studio is currently filled with fabric in shades of white, grey, blue, black, and translucent tones. I’m drawn to how these subtle variations interact with light and with one another. Softness and transparency have become ways for me to think about vulnerability, protection, and transformation.
- Suspended forms in nature
I keep noticing forms suspended in nature: dried leaves caught in branches, abandoned nests, vines, fragments hanging between the ground and the sky. I’m fascinated by things that seem to exist somewhere between living and dying, holding on and letting go.
- Sunsets and slowing down
Watching sunsets has become a small ritual. Being in nature reminds me to slow down, pay attention, and let my nervous system settle after periods of overstimulation. I think about slowness and care in my work, but I’m increasingly interested in actually practising them in my everyday life.
- Running
Running has become an important form of care for me. It helps regulate my nervous system and creates a rhythm outside the unpredictability of being an artist. Since my work often considers care and embodied experience, I’ve been thinking more about how those ideas can become actual practices in my own life.