Bonjour Chien, d’ici et d’ailleurs

A walk in the Quartier des Spectacles and downtown Montreal featuring the art of Chien Champion.

Seen through the eyes of illustrator Chien Champion, Montreal is a colourful, vibrant, cartoonish place on the border of reality and fantasy. Through Chien – an inquisitive, sensitive, ever-changing character – the artist crafts a story inspired by his life in Montreal and his family’s Chilean origins. It’s a life lived between belonging and rootlessness. The story is infused with a love of culture and sports, as well as fascination with the world around him. It is Chien’s quest that will lead him to find the place he can call “home.”

Presented in the Quartier des Spectacles and the downtown core, Bonjour Chien, d’ici et d’ailleurs is an 11-chapter odyssey to be explored in order – or chaos! Each sculpture, installation and video projection is based on drawings by Chien Champion. The works explore a particular way of living in the city by bringing memory to life and asking what it means to feel at home. Along the way Chien observes, plays, learns and makes memories.

At the heart of this story, a bag accompanies the character. A symbol of migration and memory, it carries within it origins, journeys, and stories. It serves as a reminder that, even when on the move, we never truly stop carrying multiple versions of ourselves.

The unique aesthetic of Chien Champion – whose real name is Felipe Arriagada-Nunez – blends simple shapes with a confident visual richness and imperfect lines. Lively colours, moving images, shifting patterns: his language oscillates between keen observations of everyday life and wild flights of imagination. The artist embraces a certain chaos that leads memories, places and identities to intertwine.
 

^{Bonjour Chien, d’ici et d’ailleurs is an initiative of the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership in collaboration with Complexe Desjardins, the Centre Eaton de Montréal, The Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth, Place Montréal Trust, Place Ville Marie, Montréal centre-ville and BAnQ.  The project is made possible by the financial support and cooperation of the Ville de Montréal and the gouvernement du Québec.}