Primordial: A Retrospective of Nicolas Premier

This event is free and open to all.

As part of the exhibition Africa is the Future: Echoes and Responses by Nicolas Premier at SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, a selection of his films will be presented at Cinéma Public. This Franco-Congolese artist, a wandering master of the in-between, offers a poetic visual language combining celestial and terrestrial bodies in motion. His works transcend space and time while remaining rooted in reality, offering an immersive, dreamlike experience. This Canadian premiere will be followed by a Q&A with the artist and the curator of the exhibition, offering an opportunity to explore and deepen the understanding of the creative processes and themes addressed in his body of work.

THE TEARS THAT TOUCH THE SUN

Nicolas Premier | 2023 | France | Portuguese with English subtitles | 14’31. In exile after a tragic crossing of the ocean that separated them, Antoinette and Ambroise journey through the night as if in a tunnel, following silhouettes and shadows on the path to inner worlds. When they finally reunite, they merge like two stars in an interstellar cloud.

CASTAWAY

Nicolas Premier | 2023 | United States | English | 5’25. Majestic rocks overlook the sea. Apparitions and floating scenes. The island was once inhabited. Light sculpts faces and landscapes, sparkling on agile fingers. Words of a poem slip out from lips, parted like a rift leading to the heart of earth.

PRIMORDIALE

Nicolas Premier | 2024 | France | no dialogue | 31’00. Layers of history build up in boulders. The man is immersed into the ripples of millennia, decentered, cosmic. Motion of the light. Motion of the water. Sunrise and sunset enjoy the complicity of twinship. Celestial bodies burst from nothingness.

Nicolas Premier examines modernity and contemporaneity from the perspective of “out of field” experience and knowledge through his work in video, photography and installations. He explores the links of mutual borrowing and dazzlement that exist between and towards African diasporas. His transdisciplinary co-creations aim to develop his practice taking into account contexts and exhibition spaces, especially with his AITF project, a fluctuating entity and a field for formal and conceptual experimentation.