Dans l’atelier de Maggy Hamel-Metsos

Maggy Hamel-Metsos’s work has long held my attention. In the past five years, she has created exhibitions that are emotionally charged and meticulously engaged with space and materiality. Her works operate within a careful tension between intensity and restraint; from this balance emerges a vulnerability that feels unsettling yet demands presence. Encountering her exhibitions feels like walking between mirrors: the longer one looks, the more the space multiplies, revealing a labyrinth of contexts, histories, and emotions.

Maggy welcomes me to her studio on the second floor of Fonderie Darling, a former foundry that now houses a prominent gallery and studio complex. My late-January visit finds her midway through the concluding year of her Montréal Studios residency (2023–26). The studio feels lived-in, with a variety of objects organized and maintained with deliberate care. Shelves along the walls display neatly marked bins containing power tools, adhesives, and various metal objects, each sorted by their relationality and use.