{"id":275886,"date":"2026-05-01T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/chronique\/dans-latelier-de-maggy-hamel-metsos\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T13:06:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T18:06:49","slug":"dans-latelier-de-maggy-hamel-metsos","status":"publish","type":"chronique","link":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/columns\/dans-latelier-de-maggy-hamel-metsos\/","title":{"rendered":"Dans l’atelier de Maggy Hamel-Metsos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Maggy Hamel-Metsos\u2019s 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.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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 Montr\u00e9al Studios residency (2023\u201326). 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I scan the studio, I notice remnants from previous projects, including a pair of red heels and a hefty spool of film from her 2023 installation O.W.M.B.<\/em> My eyes catch, across the room, a decorative mirror from her grandiose 2025 solo exhibition, Simile Aria<\/em>. This mirror was tasked with catching a passing ray of sunlight and redirecting it to enflame photographs of opera singers and crying infants. In wooden crates rest metal pipes from a Casavant organ, which, in the same exhibition, were arranged in clusters that hung like chandeliers. Air compressors once breathed life through them, turning the Fonderie into a trembling, sonorous stage. Each pipe is now carefully marked with labels reminiscent of toe tags; yet, even in their quietness, these objects retain a charged presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\"Maggy-Hamel-Metsos\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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We sit on a white couch beneath towering wooden organ pipes mounted along the wall, a setting that seems conducive for ideas to channel through. Here, Maggy generously shares insights into her process, what it means to inhabit space, and how ideas are embodied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maggy attributes her inclination to organize and sort to her childhood\u200a\u2014\u200aa response to growing up amid material abundance. \u201cThere have always been a lot of objects that have surrounded me throughout my youth,\u201d she reflects. \u201cOne of my instincts that resulted from that uneasiness with clutter was to sort.\u201d This impulse to arrange and pare down extends into her art practice. In her ongoing Monument<\/em> series (2023\u2013ongoing), she melts metal objects into ingots shaped like commem-orative plaques and then inscribes the objects\u2019 names onto the -surface with metal punches. Stripping away form allows for the symbolic to emerge. The resulting text reads as both an inventory and a short-form poem. She notes, \u201cI feel like condensing meaning is always what I am trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although compression is fundamental to Maggy\u2019s process, its effect on the viewer often feels like the inverse. As she distils objects to their essence, the works themselves expand, offering a layered and multifaceted experience. Take, for instance, her exhibition Whole Wide World<\/em> (2022), in which an ordinary spoon becomes a portal for personal, historical, and collective meanings. Research and conceptualization are evidently also part of her method. When I ask if the studio is also a space for forming these types of associations, she makes the distinction between thinking and production: \u201cI don\u2019t really use a studio as a space to think. I think a lot of artists do that, but I can\u2019t. I find it visually too charged to think. It\u2019s like, I don\u2019t have space to breathe.\u201d She clarifies, \u201cMy studio has become a production space, and for me, a production space cannot be a thinking space. Of course, there\u2019s some thinking that happens here, but the thinking is around what is happening under my eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\"Maggy-Hamel-Metsos\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Within the unbounded space of her mind, concepts move freely, untempered by reality. \u201cMy mind is very vivid when I go to sleep,\u201d she explains. \u201cWhen I have my eyes closed, I can imagine whatever I want.\u201d The challenge arises in reconciling these visions with physical limitations. \u201cSo often, my projects are unfeasible,\u201d she admits. \u201cThat is when the negotiation happens. I have to put up with the laws of physics because in my head they don\u2019t exist.\u201d This bridge between dream and reality introduces an element of chance into her process. She observes, \u201cThe failure of translation between different planes of reality is a productive error.\u201d It is from this generative misalignment that her process begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maggy\u2019s artistic process unfolds organically and internally. \u201cSo much of it is predisposition, chance, and intuition,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I have ideas, I cannot undertake them unless I have the right mind alignment, so I need to wait for that nexus to happen, otherwise I don\u2019t feel like I am being honest with what I am doing.\u201d She reveals that she doesn\u2019t rely on sketchbooks to document or process ideas; instead, she trusts her mind, intuition, and bodily perception. \u201cIt just inhabits me. It really comes from the inside.\u201d She admits, \u201cI\u2019m like a time bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through this internal process, Maggy constructs a cosmology of interconnected ideas: \u201cThe work is an intricate network of connections between elements, like a mathematical sentence that one can grasp intellectually.\u201d However, she notes a growing interest in prioritizing sensation. She references psychoanalysis as a frame for understanding her approach, emphasizing that in her work she seeks to go deep into human existence and emotion, not to comfort, but to confront. \u201cMaybe a physical sensation I am trying to reach in my work is vertigo,\u201d she suggests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vertiginous sensations manifest differently across her projects. In Whole Wide World<\/em>, viewers experienced a sense of floating, becoming disoriented as they appeared as floating images within a small concave cavity on the wall. Her exhibition Caretakers<\/em> (2021) featured borrowed vases atop rented jack posts extending to the ceiling. Maggy describes a reverse vertigo, \u201clooking up at structures that feel as though they might fall.\u201d These works find ways to unsettle the viewer and generate a depth of felt experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\"Maggy-Hamel-Metsos\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Simile Aria<\/em> demonstrates her ability to forge deep connections and elicit strong emotional responses. At the vernissage, I witnessed the organ pipes awaken as air from the compressors surged through them, producing an intense, mechanical chorus that left me, and many others, shaken. On the final day of the exhibition, I returned to the gallery shortly before closing, compelled to be with the work as it exhaled one final time. Her eyes well up as I recount this memory, \u201cThe last breath!\u201d she exclaims. I joke that the work was likely reactivated the next day for deinstallation, but she pauses. \u201cI don\u2019t think it was,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I asked her about the relationship with her works once they are activated. \u201cIt is heartbreaking,\u201d she confides. \u201cWhen I finish a project, it\u2019s like watching your kid go and make a life of their own. But also, there\u2019s this aspect of it, you dedicate so much of your life, and the vividness of which you live in this thing, afterwards it\u2019s hard not to feel completely eviscerated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I conclude my visit by asking Maggy which materials or ideas are currently drawing her attention. She expresses an interest in surface capture and the concept of auras, citing the Shroud of Turin as a lingering source of inquiry. She also mentions portraiture, describing a new work in progress that she calls Self-Portraits As Newborns<\/em>. She shows me a small collection of metal hammer heads, locks, and silver rings that belonged to her parents, explaining that these heirlooms will be merged into new forms. The resulting works will be scaled to her measurements as a newborn: weight, length, and head circumference. \u201cWhen you\u2019re in the womb,\u201d she notes, \u201cyou are an equation, you are the direct result of reproductive activity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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She asks whether I have read the work of Belgian novelist Am\u00e9lie Nothomb and begins to discuss M\u00e9taphysique des tubes <\/em>(2000): \u201cNothomb starts by saying babies are \u2018little gods,\u2019 because they are just channels\u200a\u2014\u200atubes\u200a\u2014\u200athey put things in their mouth, and it just comes out. They are just vehicles through which things happen.\u201d I gasp, interrupting her, as I draw a connection between this reference, the organ tubes, and the images of infants crying in Simile Aria<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She laughs. \u201cWell, you see what I mean? I never took notes of that; it all just lives in my mind, and then some connection happens! In a way, I feel like I am the bearer of many ideas: things I read, other people\u2019s work, and even life experiences. I have to digest them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maggy notes that these topics are rarely at the forefront of her mind; they resurface only when prompted in conversations like this one. She describes forgetting as a deliberate strategy, \u201cformed perhaps from the intensity of doing, which can feel overwhelming or even traumatic.\u201d For her, art making serves as a form of release. \u201cSo much is catalyzed; when the idea gets out, it\u2019s like an exorcism of all these things that I\u2019ve accumulated in my mind and body, and it exists outside of me, and then I can finally rest, and forget about it.\u201d She adds, \u201cSometimes things emerge back; you never fully exorcise something.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":275877,"template":"","categories":[887],"numeros":[8014],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[5625],"artistes":[5547],"thematiques":[],"type_chronique":[510],"class_list":["post-275886","chronique","type-chronique","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","numeros-117-crip","auteurs-hanss-lujan-torres-en","artistes-maggy-hamel-metsos-en","type_chronique-atelier-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chronique\/275886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chronique"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chronique"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275886"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=275886"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=275886"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=275886"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=275886"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=275886"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=275886"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=275886"},{"taxonomy":"type_chronique","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_chronique?post=275886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}