Le Groupe de Tourisme Gaviota lance à nouveau cette année un appel à participation pour la version en ligne du Concours International de Photographie Nature Numérique 2026. L’appel est ouvert à partir du 14 avril et se termine le 3 juillet 2026.

Le Costa Rica désormais accessible sans escale depuis Québec

·         Ajout d’une liaison exclusive entre Toronto et la Martinique

·         Deux routes européennes phares maintenant offertes à l’année : Toronto–Paris et Montréal–Barcelone

·         Diversification de l’offre vers le Sud au départ de London et Charlottetown

·         Retour en Floride au départ de Montréal, Québec et Halifax

A pesar de los desafíos logísticos, Cuba continúa su movilización para reactivar el turismo. FITCuba 2026, que se llevará a cabo en un formato híbrido combinando encuentros virtuales y eventos presenciales, se perfila como un momento clave para reconectar con los mercados internacionales y reavivar el interés de los viajeros, en especial de los quebequenses y canadienses.

Air Transat, en collaboration avec l’aéroport international Tom Jobim RIOgaleão, souligne le succès d’un voyage de familiarisation organisé du 14 au 22 mars 2026 au Brésil, à la suite du lancement, en février 2026, de ses nouveaux vols sans escale reliant Toronto et Montréal à Rio de Janeiro. Ce voyage de familiarisation a permis de mettre en valeur le fort potentiel touristique de la région tout en renforçant les liens avec des partenaires stratégiques du marché canadien. Le groupe était accompagné par Laura Albrow, chargée de comptes chez Air Transat.

CINEMANIA poursuit son engagement en faveur du rayonnement des cinémas francophones

avec une présence remarquée au Festival Nouveaux Regards en Guadeloupe.

Organizado por Erick Guillén, Gerente Comercial de Morochucos Reps, FIT Perú y el Mundo reunió a delegaciones de Cuba, Chile, Perú, Bolivia, Brasil y Ecuador, mostrando experiencias únicas, cultura y destinos sorprendentes. Entre ellas, destacó la presencia de Ecuador como país invitado, con su destino emblemático: las Islas Galápagos.

Du 25 juin au 4 juillet, le Festival International de Jazz de Montréal s’impose une fois de plus comme l’un des grands rendez-vous culturels de l’été canadien. Avec plus de 350 concerts, dont deux tiers gratuits, la ville se transforme en une scène vibrante où le jazz dialogue avec les musiques du monde, affirmant son ouverture et sa diversité.

Del 25 de junio al 4 de julio, el Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (FIJM) regresa como uno de los grandes encuentros culturales del verano canadiense. Con más de 350 conciertos, de los cuales dos tercios son gratuitos, la ciudad se transforma en un escenario vibrante donde el jazz dialoga con las músicas del mundo, reafirmando su vocación de apertura y diversidad.

There are festivals one attends, and there are festivals one inhabits. The 44th edition of the Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA), held in Montreal, belongs unmistakably to the latter.

Founded in 1981 by René Rozon, FIFA has grown into the most important festival in the world dedicated to the international promotion and circulation of films on art and media arts. With an initial mission “to increase the knowledge and appreciation of art among the public,” the festival has, over more than four decades, built a remarkable legacy: over 5,000 films presented from nearly 80 countries and more than 400 awards granted. What began as a six-day event is now an 11-day celebration of artistic expression in cinematic form.

A City of Festivals, A Festival Apart

Montreal is a city that breathes festivals, with a cultural calendar that spans the entire year. In less than a year, I had already encountered several, each offering a distinct lens into cinema and culture.

Yet FIFA stood apart. Within this rich cultural landscape, it asserts a presence that is both precise and singular.

What makes FIFA distinctive is not only its longevity, but the clarity of its focus: a festival devoted to films that engage with art as subject, form, and experience. Moving fluidly across disciplines (cinema, visual arts, photography, architecture, dance, music, design, and digital and media-based practices) it expands the possibilities of what the moving image can hold.

What makes this discovery particularly meaningful for me is that it emerges from a broader trajectory shaped by experiences in film programming and curatorial practice. Before arriving in Montreal, I had the opportunity to engage with festivals such as the San Sebastián International Film Festival (Zinemaldia) and Punto de Vista in Pamplona, experiencing them both as a spectator and through more curatorial and institutional perspectives.

This dual position (between observation and internal understanding) has shaped the way I approach festivals not as isolated events, but as complex cultural systems. From this perspective, FIFA reveals its singularity not in opposition to other festivals, but through a distinct logic: one that prioritizes thematic coherence and artistic focus over scale.

It is precisely in this deliberate narrowing (this focus on art as both subject and practice) where its strength becomes visible.

FIFA does not limit itself to being an event. It functions as an ecosystem. Its professional hub, FIFA Connexions, its international network (FOAN), and its streaming platform ARTS.FILM extend its presence far beyond the eleven days of screenings. In contrast to festivals that sometimes concentrate their energy into a single temporal peak, FIFA distributes its influence across the year, sustaining a continuous circulation of art films, ideas, and collaborations.

This structural continuity is not anecdotal; it is ideological. It suggests that films on art and media practices should not be consumed as an isolated moment, but as an ongoing practice.

Entering the Festival: A Volunteer’s Perspective

My first real contact with FIFA came not through the screen, but through participation. I took part in the festival as a volunteer, joining a team of around 130 volunteers for this edition.

The room was full, an immediate indication of the scale and enthusiasm surrounding FIFA. During those sessions, we were introduced to the artistic and executive director, Philippe U. del Drago, as well as to the teams behind the festival’s different sections and programs.

But beyond the formal presentations, what struck me most was the atmosphere.

Entering the festival’s offices, I was greeted by a large Jean-Michel Basquiat poster dominating the wall, a bold statement of artistic intent. Surrounding it were framed posters from past editions, some featuring the unmistakable visual language of Keith Haring. It was not just decoration; it was a declaration: this is a festival that lives and breathes art.

Opening and Closing: A Full Circle Experience

I had the privilege of attending both the opening night and the closing screening of the festival, witnessing its beginning and its conclusion.

The festival officially opened on March 12 at the Monument-National, one of Montreal’s emblematic cultural venues. The theater was completely full, a powerful testament to the audience’s anticipation. The opening film, Mon Amour c’est pour le restant de mes jours, set the tone for what was to come, not only as a cinematic experience, but as a conceptual entry point into the festival itself.

Days later, the closing film, The Way We Move, offered a different but equally resonant perspective, bringing the experience to a meaningful close.

As someone deeply connected to visual arts, cinema, and the moving image, being able to inhabit the festival across its duration felt like entering a sustained artistic atmosphere, one shaped not only by films, but by encounters, conversations, and shared sensibilities. The experience was not only cinematic, but profoundly artistic, while extending into a sense of community and shared collaboration.

Watching the Festival: A Curated Immersion

Beyond my role as a volunteer, I attended seven film sessions across different sections of the program, including the Carte Blanche selection More-Than-Human Worlds, curated by Pauline Soh, Senior Curator of Programmes at the National Gallery Singapore, presenting a program of six works by contemporary Southeast Asian artists and filmmakers. From there, the program shifted into other sections and perspectives: Viktor, Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other, The Designer is Dead, Farruquito: A Flamenco Dynasty, and the closing film, The Way We Move.

This selection of films offers only one possible reading of the festival. Had I chosen a different set of screenings or Carte Blanche programs, I would have inevitably encountered another constellation of works and, with it, another version of FIFA. With hundreds of films presented across the festival, it is impossible to grasp it in its entirety. Yet there is also something rewarding in this partial access: the freedom to build one’s own path through the program, and to construct a personal reading based on what time, curiosity, and circumstance allow.

This sense of partiality becomes even more evident when considering the scale of the 44th edition: 178 titles from 52 countries, including 60 Canadian films, with 41 world premieres. Notably, 93 films were (co-)directed by women, reflecting a strong commitment to diverse voices in contemporary films on art. The official competitions included 23 international and 17 national entries, highlighting a careful balance between global reach and local presence.

Stills from selected films, from left to right: Farruquito: A Flamenco Dynasty, Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other, Viktor and The Designer is Dead.

Recurring Themes: Art, Mortality, and the Human Condition

Across the screenings I attended, a pattern began to emerge, one that I had not anticipated, yet felt deeply coherent within the festival’s curatorial vision: a sustained reflection on mortality.

Mon Amour c’est pour le restant de mes jours, centered on Quebec filmmaker Robert Morin, emerged as one of the most striking films in my selection. As a newcomer to Montreal, I was searching for traces of non-commercial, local cinema, voices that exist beyond mainstream recognition. Discovering his work through this intimate lens felt like an initiation into a lesser-known cultural lineage.

This reflection on life and its finitude reappeared in Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other, where photographer Joel Meyerowitz and writer Maggie Barrett confront aging, artistic frustration, and the inevitability of death through the prism of their relationship. Similarly, the documentary on Farruquito carries an underlying awareness of legacy and generational continuity, unfolding between glory and tragedy, while The Designer is Dead plays with the ambiguity of disappearance, revealing a creator, Miguel Adrover, who has not died, but has instead withdrawn from the systems that once defined him.

In all these works, death is not treated as spectacle, but as a condition, something to think with, rather than something to fear. It appears less as an event than as a structure, quietly shaping how time, memory, and artistic gesture unfold.

Alongside this line of inquiry, another thematic thread emerged around the relationship between art, the body, and access. In the words of FIFA’s Artistic Director Philippe U. del Drago, art can be understood as “a laboratory for the expansion of human language,” where it constantly shifts imaginaries, reconfigures perception, and redefines what is visible, audible, and thinkable. He further writes that cinema, perhaps more than any other art form, becomes the space where these languages meet, collide, and translate one another, asking us to “learn the language of the other” not as assimilation, but as a form of openness and displacement.

Within this framework, films such as The Way We Move explore how deaf communities experience and collectively translate music, expanding the sensory boundaries of performance. In a more politically charged register, Viktor follows a deaf Ukrainian man during the ongoing war, whose desire to enlist in the army confronts the structural limits imposed by his condition. Unable to serve as a soldier, he turns to photojournalism in search of purpose and participation. Here, deafness is not only a question of accessibility, but of agency, usefulness, and belonging within a nation at war.

Even indirectly, projects like Song of the Hands point toward a redefinition of how art can be transmitted, translated, and felt. Taken together, these films suggest that FIFA is not only about representing art, but about interrogating who art is for, and under what conditions it can be experienced, shared, or even lived.

FIFA Connexions: A Global Network of Art and Cinema

For its 44th edition, FIFA signals a shift in its professional program through FIFA Connexions, conceived not merely as an industry platform but as a dynamic space for exchange, learning, and professional development. Through round tables, conferences, workshops, and pitch sessions, it creates conditions for dialogue around key contemporary challenges, creation, distribution, financing, and the circulation of works.

What distinguishes Connexions is its deliberate inclusivity: it places emerging voices and early-career professionals in direct conversation with established figures, fostering an environment where knowledge is shared horizontally rather than hierarchically. In this sense, it functions as a laboratory for future collaborations and as a bridge between local and international ecosystems.

FOAN: Extending the Network

FOAN (Festival of Films on Art Network) operates as a distinct but complementary structure. Composed of member institutions across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, it facilitates the exchange of knowledge and practices while supporting the production, circulation, and visibility of films on art.

More than a formal alliance, FOAN acts as a space of dialogue and collaboration, where partners collectively reflect on the evolving role of art films within a global cultural landscape. In this context, such films can be understood as sensitive indicators of social and cultural change, carrying meanings that extend beyond the screen.

A Festival Beyond Time and Space

One of FIFA’s most compelling evolutions is its digital extension: ARTS.FILM. This online platform transforms the festival into a year-round experience, offering access to more than 600 films that are otherwise difficult (or impossible) to find.

During the festival period and beyond, audiences can continue exploring its programming from home, extending the life of the festival beyond its physical duration.

Belonging Through Festivals

As a recent arrival in Montreal, my experience of FIFA is inseparable from my process of building a sense of belonging within the city.

What becomes evident over time is that Montreal’s festivals do not compete, they coexist. Each occupies a specific space within an annual cultural cycle, addressing different audiences, disciplines, and sensibilities. Together, they form a living ecosystem.

Within this landscape, FIFA stands out as the festival with which I feel the strongest intellectual and professional affinity. Its focus on art, its curatorial rigor, and its expanded structure resonate with contemporary practices in curatorial studies and film programming, particularly those concerned with expanded notions of exhibition and circulation.

To encounter such a festival not only as a spectator, but also as a volunteer, is to engage with it on multiple levels.

Beyond the Festival

FIFA ultimately invites a broader reflection on what a film festival can be today. In an era where images circulate endlessly and attention is fragmented, FIFA proposes an alternative model: one rooted in depth, continuity, and dialogue across artistic practices. Its commitment to art is not static or self-referential, but oriented toward a transdisciplinary space in which perception itself is reshaped, particularly at a moment marked by global instability and the ongoing violence of multiple conflicts, where artistic practices also become sites of reflection, resistance, and solace.

If traditional festivals often seek to frame the present of film, FIFA seems to ask a different question: what is the place of art within it?

And perhaps more importantly, who is it for, and under what conditions does it become accessible, perceptible, and shared?

On Thursday, March 12, the Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA) opened its 44th edition at the Monument-National, one of the most important film events dedicated to cinema about art. The film chosen to open the festival was the documentary Mon amour, c’est pour les restant de mes jours, directed by Quebec filmmaker André-Line Beauparlant, an intimate work that explores the life and work of her partner, filmmaker Robert Morin.

Running 95 minutes and narrated in Quebec French, the film unfolds as a deeply personal portrait. Beauparlant, known for her work as an art director on numerous Quebec film productions and for documentaries about members of her own family, turns her camera here toward the partner with whom she has shared her life for decades.

The two met when Morin was 44 and Beauparlant 27. She was just beginning her career in cinema and was working as a set decorator on Morin’s film Windigo (1994). From that encounter began a relationship that, over time, also evolved into a creative dialogue.

The documentary adopts a curiously dual form. Beauparlant almost never appears on screen, yet her presence is constant: we hear her voice, her reflections, and the questions and statements she directs to Morin. The film thus works as a kind of intimate diptych. On one side is the portrait of the filmmaker; on the other, the loving (and at times inquisitive) gaze of the person observing him.

With more than thirty-five films in his career, Morin emerges as a deeply atypical figure within Canadian cinema. He has never pursued commercial filmmaking. Over the years his work has moved through different formats, from Super 8 to magnetic video and, more recently, digital media. By revisiting her partner’s archives, Beauparlant shows how each technological shift became for him an opportunity for exploration.

When she asks him how he would define his art, Morin responds with disarming honesty: he is interested in showing things that unsettle people, images that make viewers uncomfortable. He confesses that making art is what helps him fight depression; art, he admits, is his addiction.

In one of the documentary’s most revealing passages, Morin speaks about “the weight of dreams”: the films that exist in one’s imagination but are never completed. For him, part of the craft lies in accepting the failure of certain projects that will never see the light of day. And yet, whenever he sits down at his computer, he feels as if he has entered a kind of sanctuary.

This absolute dedication to artistic work also implies a degree of selfishness, the filmmaker acknowledges. He explains that he has always tried to avoid distractions that might take time away from his creative practice. He had two children from previous relationships, but with Beauparlant he did not build a family in that sense.

As the conversation unfolds, a darker dimension of Morin’s biography also emerges. He recalls a traumatic childhood event: he was walking with a friend when suddenly a bus struck the boy. The child died instantly while Morin remained unharmed. The image of blood and bones deeply marked his memory; for several days, he says, he even lost his sense of time.

Death would appear again in other ways throughout his life. His father was injured in a collision with a train and remained bedridden for years, and their relationship was distant and lacking affection. Later, his mother died in a fire caused by Christmas decorations.

And yet the documentary makes clear that Morin is not a dark or fatalistic figure. Rather, he seems to be someone who has learned to live with the constant presence of loss.

This reflection on death also runs through the film project Morin attempts to make during the years Beauparlant is filming him. It is a fiction centered on a moose wounded by an arrow who, aware of his fate, lies down in the forest to await death. The director hopes to film how the animal’s body becomes food for other creatures (bears, coyotes, scavengers) and eventually decomposes.

But nature does not cooperate with the script. Only a few vultures, some birds, and occasionally a fox appear. The filmmaker’s persistence in trying to capture the moment becomes almost absurd and, at the same time, deeply human. At one point he even resorts to small manual tricks to simulate the breathing of the dying moose, hoping to record the animal’s final gasps.

In contrast to this obsession with death, Beauparlant’s documentary seems guided by another force. At one point in the film, Morin asks his partner whether she thinks about death. She answers that she does not. He, on the other hand, admits that he thinks about it often.

She then formulates a quiet conclusion: if Morin’s film about the moose is an attempt to understand death, hers is, instead, a film about love.

The opening screening also had a special element: both André-Line Beauparlant and Robert Morin were present in the theater, sharing the experience with the audience. It is one of the small kinds of magic that film festivals manage to weave, the direct encounter between a work and the people who created it.

For Morin, the evening carried particular significance. It was the first time he had seen the completed documentary his partner had made about him. Before the screening began, Beauparlant tried to reassure him with a simple phrase: “Everything will be fine, Robert.”

When the lights came up at the end of the film, unanimous applause filled the room. Visibly moved (and perhaps a little overwhelmed by the attention) Beauparlant and Morin went up together to the cinema podium to thank the audience. He told her then that she had done a tremendous job; she received the comment with genuine surprise and a smile.

Thus, amid emotion, complicity, and cinema, the first screening of the 44th edition of the Festival International du Film sur l’Art was officially inaugurated.

El jueves 12 de marzo se inauguró en el teatro Monument-National la 44ª edición del Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA), uno de los encuentros cinematográficos más importantes dedicados al cine sobre arte. La película encargada de abrir el festival fue el documental Mon amour, c’est pour les restant de mes jours, dirigido por la cineasta quebequense André-Line Beauparlant, una obra íntima que explora la vida y la obra de su pareja, el cineasta Robert Morin.

Con una duración de 95 minutos y narrada en francés quebequense, la película se presenta como un retrato profundamente personal. Beauparlant, conocida por su trabajo como directora artística en numerosas producciones del cine quebequense y por documentales dedicados a miembros de su familia, dirige aquí su mirada hacia el compañero con quien comparte su vida desde hace décadas.

Ambos se conocieron cuando Morin tenía 44 años y Beauparlant 27. Ella comenzaba su camino en el cine y trabajaba como decoradora de set en la película Windigo (1994), dirigida por Morin. A partir de ese encuentro comenzó una relación que, con el paso del tiempo, se transformó también en un diálogo creativo.

El documental adopta una forma curiosamente doble. Beauparlant casi nunca aparece en pantalla, pero su presencia es constante: escuchamos su voz, sus reflexiones y las preguntas y declaraciones que le dirige a Morin. La película funciona así como un díptico íntimo. Por un lado, el retrato del cineasta; por el otro, la mirada amorosa (y a veces inquisitiva) de quien lo observa.

Morin, con más de treinta y cinco películas en su trayectoria, se revela como un cineasta profundamente atípico dentro del panorama canadiense. Nunca ha perseguido el cine comercial. Su trabajo ha transitado por distintos formatos a lo largo de los años: desde el Super 8 hasta el video magnético y, más recientemente, el medio digital. Beauparlant revisita los archivos de su compañero y muestra cómo cada cambio tecnológico fue para él una oportunidad de exploración.

Cuando ella le pregunta cómo definiría su arte, Morin responde con una franqueza desarmante: le interesa mostrar aquello que sacude al espectador, lo que lo incomoda. Confiesa que hacer arte es lo que le ayuda a combatir la depresión; el arte, admite, es su adicción.

En uno de los pasajes más reveladores del documental, Morin habla del “peso de los sueños”: esas películas que existen en la imaginación pero que nunca logran realizarse. Para él, parte del oficio consiste en aceptar el fracaso de ciertos proyectos que jamás verán la luz. Aun así, cada vez que se sienta frente a su computadora siente que entra en una especie de santuario.

Esa dedicación absoluta al trabajo artístico también implica un grado de egoísmo, reconoce el propio cineasta. Explica que siempre intentó evitar distracciones que pudieran alejarlo de su creación. Tuvo dos hijos en relaciones anteriores, pero con Beauparlant no formó una familia en ese sentido.

A lo largo de la conversación emerge también una dimensión más oscura de su biografía. Morin recuerda un episodio traumático de su infancia: caminaba con un amigo cuando, de pronto, un autobús lo atropelló. El niño murió en el acto mientras él permanecía ileso. La imagen de la sangre y los huesos marcó profundamente su memoria; durante días, cuenta, perdió incluso la noción del tiempo.

La muerte volvería a aparecer en su vida de otras formas. Su padre sufrió un accidente al chocar contra un tren y quedó postrado durante años, y su relación con él fue distante, sin afecto. Más tarde, su madre moriría en un incendio provocado por una decoración navideña.

Sin embargo, el documental deja claro que Morin no es una figura sombría ni fatalista. Más bien parece alguien que ha aprendido a convivir con la presencia constante de la pérdida.

Esa reflexión sobre la muerte atraviesa también el proyecto cinematográfico que Morin intenta realizar durante los años en que Beauparlant lo filma. Se trata de una ficción centrada en un alce herido por una flecha que, consciente de su final, se recuesta en el bosque para esperar la muerte. El director quiere filmar cómo el cuerpo se convierte en alimento para otros seres: osos, coyotes, carroñeros y, posteriormente se degrada.

Pero la naturaleza no coopera con el guion. Apenas aparecen algunos buitres, ciertas aves y ocasionalmente un zorro. La obstinación del cineasta por capturar ese momento se vuelve casi absurda y, al mismo tiempo, profundamente humana. Incluso llega a utilizar pequeños trucos manuales para simular la respiración del alce agonizante, intentando registrar los últimos estertores del animal.

En contraste con esa obsesión por la muerte, el documental de Beauparlant parece estar guiado por otra fuerza. En un momento de la película, Morin le pregunta a su pareja si ella piensa en la muerte. Ella responde que no. Él, en cambio, admite que sí lo hace con frecuencia.

Entonces ella formula una especie de conclusión silenciosa: si la película de Morin sobre el alce es un intento por comprender la muerte, la suya es, en cambio, una película sobre el amor.

La proyección de apertura tuvo además un elemento especial: tanto André-Line Beauparlant como Robert Morin se encontraban presentes en la sala, compartiendo la experiencia con el público. Esa es una de las pequeñas magias que los festivales de cine consiguen tejer: el encuentro directo entre las obras y quienes las crean.

Para Morin, la velada tenía un significado particular. Era la primera vez que veía terminado el documental que su pareja había realizado sobre él. Antes de que comenzara la proyección, Beauparlant intentó tranquilizarlo con una frase sencilla: “Todo irá bien, Robert”.

Al encenderse las luces al final de la película, un aplauso unánime llenó la sala. Visiblemente conmovidos (y también un poco abrumados por la atención) Beauparlant y Morin subieron juntos al podio del cine para agradecer la recepción. Él le dijo entonces que había hecho un trabajo tremendo; ella, sorprendida, recibió el comentario con una sonrisa genuina.

Así, entre emoción, complicidad y cine, quedó inaugurada la primera proyección de la 44ª edición del Festival International du Film sur l’Art.

Kimpov Eap’s studio is in her home, to the right as you enter; there is always a canvas in progress or freshly finished on her easel. It is a room where other works of hers hang, and a window lets in natural light. Nothing on her canvases immediately explains the history behind them. And perhaps that is the first clue: her painting does not illustrate the past or trauma; it metabolizes them, turning them into color and expression.

“I decided to simply be happy,” she says.

The statement is not rhetorical. It does not have the tone of someone proclaiming exemplary triumph. It is a serene assertion, made without emphasis. Between Cambodia, devastated by the Khmer Rouge regime, and her current life in Montreal, she does not construct a personal myth; she affirms an act of will.

But before the genocide in Cambodia, there was another life.

View of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Photo courtesy of Gaëtan Sheridan.

Kimpov Eap was born in the Kralanh district, in Siem Reap province, in northwest Cambodia. Before the devastation, there was childhood. Her personal history intersects with one of the most devastating episodes of the second half of the twentieth century. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge (the Communist Party of Kampuchea led by Pol Pot) took Phnom Penh and established Democratic Kampuchea. The regime evacuated entire cities, abolished urban life, and subjected the population to forced labor under military supervision. Between 1975 and 1979, a quarter of Cambodia’s population died from execution, hunger, disease, and exhaustion.

Kimpov’s life was marked by this period. Her husband was taken by soldiers and never returned. She lost two of her children. What appears in her biography as absence also belongs to a collective devastation.

When asked about her beginnings, the picture is different.

“I had a happy childhood,” she recalls. The youngest of eight siblings, daughter of a merchant, she grew up surrounded by her mother’s affection. She never knew her father (he died when she was just a baby) but she never felt abandoned. She attended school, learned French from the fourth grade onward, had friends, a routine. At fifteen, she married a teacher. “He was very attentive. He took good care of our home.” They had children. Happiness, in her account, is not idealized; it is concrete.

On the left is Kimpov's house in Kralanh-Kampong Thkov, Cambodia, where she grew up with his mother and siblings. On the right is Kimpov visiting his country in recent years.

Then the soldiers arrived. One day, they gathered all the men from the village. Her husband was among them. They took him. He never returned. From that moment, her story was suspended.

Like many other women with children, she was expelled from her home and forced to work the land, in the rice fields. Her body no longer belonged to her. She walked until her feet bled, carrying sacks of soil. Hunger was not metaphorical. At one point, her children ate a raw mouse out of hunger.

She does not raise her voice when recounting this. She does not emphasize horror. She speaks as one who lists inevitable facts. Perhaps extreme suffering does not need embellishment. Or perhaps memory, when fully traversed, no longer demands dramatization.

“We are innocents who suffer because of the power games of those who wish to control us,” she says in a discreet speech for one of her exhibitions. “We ask for nothing more than peace and the privilege of subsisting.”

In 1979, she managed to escape to Thailand with her children. She lived in a refugee camp. There, she heard of people being sent to other parts of the world: France, the United States. She thought, “I want to go.” They arrived in Canada in 1980, first to Maniwaki, north of Gatineau, then Montreal. She recalls the plane and arriving at a military base.

—Did you arrive at the airport?
—We arrived at the Longue-Pointe military base (east of Montreal). Thirteen families from Maniwaki sponsored my family so that we could be adopted. They came to get us. Father Auguste Legault and Jacques Braso were there. They told me, “We are going to Maniwaki. We are going to Maniwaki, and we stay because we were listening to them.”

Kimpov does not know whether the plane was military or commercial. The detail lost importance. What remained was the desire to find a brother, to reconnect with a bond that confirmed her world had not completely disappeared.

As a refugee in the early 1980s, she eventually had to pay for her passage: “I don’t know, but we paid for that plane. After a few years, we paid it all. You have to pay.”

After paying for her passage, after settling that debt with the Canadian state, painting arrived nineteen years later. In 1999, she painted her first work. She did not begin with abstractions but with studies, portraits, and still lifes, just a small part of her oeuvre, which seems to reside solely in her inner world.

“Art is my friend. I speak with it. It inspires me. It lives within me. It always brings me happiness, never unhappiness,” she says. The formulation is simple, yet radical.

Excerpt from the painting: Silence is strength.

Art does not appear in her account as therapy in a technical sense, but as companionship. As a constant presence. As an interlocutor that manifests itself.

In Montreal, Kimpov first studied fashion design, then visual arts. Later, due to a bicycle accident, she trained as an osteopath to relieve her own bodily pain. Her life was not organized around trauma, but around practices: working, raising children, studying, learning, painting, and rebuilding herself.

“Between what happened there and here… here is my paradise.” Not because she forgets or renounces the past, but because she chose not to live solely from the wound. In her story, transformation does not present itself as a spectacular feat. It is a continuous, almost silent gesture. An internal reorganization that allows the past to exist without governing the present.

Perhaps this is why her paintings do not depict recognizable scenes of war or exile. Violence does not appear as a direct image. What appears is energy. Movement. Intensity. As if lived experience had shifted from narrative to the very matter of color. But that is another layer. In the next, painting ceases to be biographical context and becomes its own territory.

Kimpov’s paintings. From left to right: Father Effect, The Bonfire (Birth), The Master of Silence.

The Invisible Structure

If the first layer of her story reveals decision (the conscious choice to live in light), the second reveals gesture. Painting does not arise in Kimpov as an illustration of the past, but as an internal reorganization. She does not seek to represent war or narrate exile; she seeks something else. “I look for surprise,” she says. And in that word lies a profound key. Surprise implies openness, availability, the relinquishment of absolute control. It implies accepting that something may emerge without having been foreseen.

When she speaks of her creative process, she does not describe a rigid method or conceptual program. She does not calculate the composition in advance nor precisely define the outcome. She takes the brush, intuitively chooses a color, and lets the work unfold. Only afterward, stepping back, does she recognize the balance. That moment of retreat (observing what has emerged) is essential. It is not chaotic improvisation, but a cultivated trust in one’s own perception.

Here an unexpected link to her other profession appears. Kimpov has been an osteopath for over fifteen years, working with the body, with invisible tensions, with misalignments that are not always seen but felt. In consultation, she structures, adjusts, aligns. And when she speaks of that act, she uses words that could also apply to painting: balance, energy, circulation. “When I structure, it feels good,” she explains. It is almost like stretching. The act of ordering is not only technical; it is bodily, intimate.

Something similar happens on her canvases. What at first glance appears as a chromatic explosion (reds advancing, blues overlapping, lines crossing the surface) contains an internal logic of redistribution. It is not cold or minimalist abstraction. Nor is it purely gestural in the sense of expressive outburst. It is abstraction shaped by bodily experience. Tension is not eliminated; it is reorganized. Intensity does not disappear; it finds its course.

Above: painting by Kimpov, Untitled.

It is revealing that when asked whether she paints in order not to forget, she responds that she does not. She does not paint memory as archive or monument. She paints from the energy that remains afterward. Her work is not testimonial in the literal sense; it does not need to show recognizable scenes to be true. For some viewers, even before knowing her biography, her canvases can convey an intensity capable of moving, unsettling, or inviting deep reflection.

After having experienced the loss of her husband, the death of two children, and displacement, she does not speak of art as a substitute or dramatic salvation. She speaks of art as companionship, as an everyday presence, as joy. There is a quiet ethic at work here: the right to pleasure after suffering, the legitimacy of creating for one’s own delight, and the desire for others to see what one paints.

Her paintings are not anchored in a tragic past; they vibrate in the present. They celebrate, without naivety, the possibility of balance. When she verbally affirms that Quebec is her paradise, she is not denying the past. She is situating her life on a new axis. And that axis is perceptible in the painting: there is dynamism, but also stability; intensity, but also warmth. The freedom she exercises in front of the canvas is not only aesthetic; it is existential. Choosing a color without fear, allowing a form to emerge without censorship, accepting surprise: all of this is part of a broader practice of affirmation.

Ultimately, Kimpov Eap does not paint what it once was. She paints what remains in motion. Her work does not seek to fix memory, but to keep it circulating, transformed into something that does not paralyze, but propels. In that circulation (between body and color, between structure and spontaneity, between past and present) resides the deep coherence of her life. The same woman who once worked the land until her hands bled now holds the brush with a different firmness. As she herself says: “It’s as if I were digging the earth, the rock; I keep searching. I have found things, but I continue; maybe I can discover something more.”

If you would like to see Kimpov’s paintings, the exhibition Sans Crainte will be on view at the Centre multifonctionnel Guy-Dupré (500, rue Saint-Laurent, La Prairie) from January 21 to April 26.

This is the first of two articles based on an interview conducted with Kimpov. The second article is titled The Memory of Color. The interview was made possible with the support of Gaëtan Sheridan.