Spring/Summer 2025 Programming at PHI

Spring/Summer 2025 Programming

April 25 – September 14, 2025
PHI, Montréal

PHI unveils its spring/summer 2025 programming with two major new exhibitions: Nico Williams’s Bingo and Lap-See Lam’s Shadow Play. These exhibitions, presented across PHI’s two spaces on Saint-Jean Street in Old Montréal, mark a key step in PHI’s evolution as a unified cultural destination.

Nico Williams: Bingo

Curated by Daniel Fiset, PHI
PHI, 451 Saint-Jean Street, Montréal
To purchase tickets, visit phi.ca

Nico Williams’s first large-scale solo museum exhibition, Bingo, offers an in-depth look at a decade of creation. It features over 30 works, including several new pieces specially conceived for this occasion. This exhibition challenges the boundary between art and craft, showcasing how these two spheres can nourish each other.

Williams, a rising figure on the international art scene and recipient of the 2024 Sobey Art Award, explores themes of gaming, economy, and cultural dynamics through beadwork. Bingo reflects on the connections between chance and social structures while integrating references to popular culture and Indigenous narratives.

Lap-See Lam: Shadow Play

Curated by Julia Paoli and Kate Whiteway, Vega Foundation, with Cheryl Sim, PHI
PHI, 465 Saint-Jean Street, Montréal
To purchase tickets, visit phi.ca

Shadow Play by Lap-See Lam immerses visitors in an experience where memory, migration, and magical realism intertwine through captivating multimedia installations: Tales of the Altersea and Floating Sea Palace.

Tales of the Altersea explores the cultural transformation of the Cantonese diaspora in Europe through a video installation inspired by the visual language of shadow puppetry. Based on the story of the Sea Palace, a floating restaurant, Lam blends folkloric tales with an imagined narrative to question cultural heritage transmission and generational losses.

Floating Sea Palace is a video installation inspired by the myth of Lo Ting, a half-human, half-fish being who is considered an ancestor of the people of Hong Kong. Projected within an immersive environment made of bamboo scaffolding—an essential element of Cantonese opera and construction—this film explores transformation, translation, and the desire to return to an ever-shifting home.

A new exhibition access model

These new exhibitions mark a pivotal moment for PHI as it transitions towards a unified identity. As of today, our two venues – the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art and the PHI Centre – are unifying to offer a seamless cultural experience driven by a shared mission: to innovate in the arts while ensuring greater accessibility to culture for an increasingly diverse audience. As part of this evolution, PHI is adopting a progressive ticketing model, allowing visitors to choose the price they’d like to pay as a contribution to PHI’s mission.

With this evolution, PHI solidifies its status as a must-visit cultural destination, offering diverse artistic experiences across multiple venues in Old Montréal.

Acknowledgments

PHI thanks the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for its financial support of the exhibition Nico Williams: Bingo. The presentation of Lap-See Lam: Shadow Play is supported by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee.

Nico Williams

Nico Williams, ᐅᑌᒥᐣ (b. 1989), is an Anishinaabe artist from Aamjiwnaang First Nation, currently based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. He has a multidisciplinary and, often collaborative, practice that is centred around sculptural beadwork. In 2021, he was awarded the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art, and in 2024, he was the laureate of the prestigious Sobey Art Award.

Lap-See Lam

Lap-See Lam is a Stockholm-based artist whose work traverses diverse genres and disciplines, from video installation to live performance, blending contemporary techniques with traditional references and methods. Lam represented Sweden in the Nordic pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024. Her installation, The Altersea Opera, realized together with composer Tze Yeung Ho and textile artist Kholod Hawash, was commissioned by Moderna Museet in Stockholm for the Nordic Pavilion. Recent solo exhibitions include The Power Plant Gallery, Toronto (2024-25); Studio Voltaire, London (2024); AKG Art Museum, Buffalo (2023-24); Swiss Institute, New York; Portikus, Frankfurt (both 2023); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2022); and Trondheim Kunstmuseum (2021).

PHI

Founded and directed by Phoebe Greenberg in Montréal, PHI is a multidisciplinary cultural hub at the intersection of art, technology, and music. Focused on the future of art and its audiences, PHI champions radical ideas through collective experiences, social engagement, and audience interactivity.

PHI offers a dynamic and diverse program that includes exhibitions, performances, installations, immersive experiences and artist-in-residence programs, fostering unexpected encounters between artists and audiences. Committed to creation, dissemination, and support for contemporary artistic practices, PHI stands as a leading cultural destination in the heart of Old Montréal.

PHI
451 & 465 Saint-Jean Street
Montréal, Quebec H2Y 2R5
Canada

Opening hours
Wednesday to Friday: 12pm to 7pm
Saturday and Sunday: 11am to 6pm

Accessibility: Partially Accessible

Information
514-225-0525
info@phi.ca
phi.ca

Media inquiries
Myriam Achard
machard@phi.ca
514-844-7474 #5104

Social media
Instagram @direphi
Facebook @direphi
Vimeo @bonjourphi
YouTube @bonjourphi
BlueSky @bonjourphi

Image credits:
Left: Nico Williams, Flamer, 2022. 11/0 seed beads on thermally-fused/braided polyethylene thread, maple, cottonwood and metal. Courtesy of the artist and Blouin Division. Photo: Paul Litherland. Right: Lap-See Lam, Tales of the Altersea, installation view, Swiss Institute, New York, 2023. Courtesy the artist and Swiss Institute, New York. Photo: Daniel Pérez.