NADIA AÏT-SAÏD / TISSÉ-SERRÉ 

Connecting through fabric: a simple piece of fabric can tell the story of an individual. Nadia Aït-Saïd, a multidisciplinary artist in residence at the Fonderie Darling as part of the Résidence Montréal-Matapédia program, intends to bring together individual memories in a collective form. 

Tissé-Serré is Nadia Aït-Saïd's latest artistic exploration. Surprised and inspired by an unexpected enthusiasm from the community during her open call to collect scarves organized for her project, entitled MADRAS, the artist transformed this experience into a work of art rich in texture and contrast. This tight weave of scarves, created by the artist, is designed to be a bodily and sensory experience. Composed of hundreds of interwoven scarves, a cylindrical structure rises from the square. Its weave of wintry materials and colors spreads across the ground in long strands of fabric, inviting the audience to continue weaving, or to gather in a tight formation at the heart of the fabric cocoon. A shared intimacy and otherness. Through a collective experience of bonding, this exploration is rooted in the constraining or liberating dynamics at work in every society and in every act of solidarity. The various forms of bias, confinement, deployment and interdependence are themes dear to the artist's heart.

Meaning both "library" and "bookshop" in Arabic, MAKTABA is a bookshop-boutique nestled in a heritage building in the Old Port of Montreal / Tio:tia'ke. An artist-run space, deeply rooted in and engaged towards performance and culture, MAKTABA aims to cultivate and share knowledge, inspiration and imagination.

As part of their participation to Fonderie Darling's H3C Neighbourhood Evening, MAKTABA presents a DJ Set created in collaboration with NARCY and Cheb Moha, an evening mixing vinyl and sounds from the Arab world. 

MAKTABA is the brainchild of the We Are The Medium collective. Founded in 2013 by Sundus Abdul Hadi and Yassin "Narcy" Alsalman, WATM is a small independent collective based in Montreal. Their work is intentional, intuitive and fiercely independent. With an overview of the industry, and suspended in the diaspora, their intention is to give back what they've received from culture while offering a diverse selection of books and authors, on a variety of subjects, for readers of all ages.