Header: Ulysse Lemerise – OSA
Created and produced by the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership, LUMINO is firmly established as an essential Montreal winter event. For 15 winters, this free and original urban experience has fulfilled its mission of transforming the city’s core into a celebration of light and creativity, highlighting Montreal’s Nordic character. Until March 9, 2025, the event features its most extensive program yet, with 30 captivating and luminous installations in public space. For the first time, they even include several indoor installations. From sunset to 11 p.m., LUMINO invites visitors to enjoy winter to the fullest by exploring luminous creations—works that bring warmth and color to the cold months.
This year, it’s more than 30 works—14 outdoors, 11 indoors, and 7 video projections. The works, created by 15 studios and 20 artists, both local and international, will offer visitors a refreshed experience throughout the winter with contemplative and participatory installations.
Marquee works to discover
The public will enjoy an impressive set of outdoor installations all winter. Posted on Sainte-Catherine and St-Urbain Streets, “Talking Heads” by Limelight Art (Hungary) is already the talk of the town, with its two heads made up of 4,000 light-emitting diodes that interact with each other to produce facial expressions in different colors and conduct real conversations through light. On Esplanade PVM at Place Ville Marie, “Éloge de l’air” by Chevalvert invites members of the public to make an enormous 5-metre banner float in the air, and “Cercle Polaire” by Jason Carter, one of Canada’s most exciting and accomplished contemporary Aboriginal visual artists, and M.A.D. Collectif invites visitors to immerse themselves in the world of majestic Far North fauna. “Lustres” by TILT, on the parvis of St. James United Church, is a unique open-air ballroom experience; “Biolumen” by Rahda Chaddah and RAW Design, at the Palais des congrès, is a unique contemplative experience inspired by bioluminescent oceanic organisms. “Orb” by SpY transforms the Place des Arts Esplanade with 90 convex discs made of polished steel.
Quebec’s artists at the heart of LUMINO
“Chaleur Humaine” is a piece by Anne Lagacé that resembles a suspended sun. It brings colour and warmth to Place Pasteur. “Les Fabuloscopes” by La Camaraderie with Eruoma Awashish, set up in front of the Grande Bibliothèque, invites passers-by to create stroboscopic animations. A major piece is “1000 Visages” by Alejandro Figuerroa of +Amor, facing the Esplanade Tranquille skating rink, is a colossal 12-metre archway with 1779 moving mirrors. “L’orchestre endormi” by Ottomata is an interactive light-and-sound installation that lets the public awaken all the musical culture slumbering on Saint-Denis Street. These artists are just a few of the 20 LUMINO creators from Quebec.
Unprecedented indoor experiences
This year, LUMINO’s programming is also enhanced with indoor installations, all open to the public, which include “Équilibre: Tensio” by Guillaume Bourassa and Francis Théberge, a dynamic, immersive installation plays with perception: chaotic, it becomes a harmonious structure when viewed from a certain position. With “VORTEX”, artist Nicolas Paolozzi stages an encounter between light, water, and geometry. This immersive work is positioned above the Complexe Desjardins fountain and provides a poetic sensory experience. Meanwhile, an interactive work called “Cinétique”, by Ottomata, is located inside The Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth, its dozens of luminous stems, arranged in a circle, inviting the public to explore the invisible kinetic forces that surround us and shape our everyday lives. Inside Place des Arts, the public is invited to discover “Kaléidoscope: A Social Media Trinity” by Alejandro Figueroa of AMOR+, an installation that explores the impact of social media through a reflection on the creation, dissemination, and consumption of content.
LUMINO also occupies the Balmoral block with six experimental works curated by three local galleries: perte de signal, Elektra Galerie, and Eastern Bloc. The public will have an exclusive opportunity to discover “Microstars” by Charline Dally and Gabrielle HB, “Porteur de Lumière” by students from NAD-UQAC, “Afflux” by Jade Delobre, “Mechanicolor” by Stéban SanFaçon, “Chasing Waterfalls” by Hidden Edges, and “Matière Première” by Yan Breuleux.
Video projections to enliven winter nights
Every night, the public can enjoy video projections that transport them to immersive visual worlds. “Étrangement satisfaisant” by COLEGRAM illuminates the façades of Édifice WILDER | Espace Danse, UQAM’s Pavillon Président-Kennedy, and the wall adjacent to Saint-Laurent metro station with a series of three video projections riffing on online culture and videos. On the façade of the Grande Bibliothèque, “Hyperobjects” by artist Aude Guivarc’h invites viewers to ponder the ephemerality of seemingly permanent and unchanging things. Lastly, the Esplanade Tranquille skating rink once again presents the interactive video projection “Au bord du lac Tranquille” by Mirari and Normal studio, taking Montrealers and visitors on a dreamy journey through Quebec’s Far North.
15 years of creativity, innovation, and international success
Since LUMINO’s inception, the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership has produced 25 works for the event and presented more than 50, showcasing installations and video projections by dozens of creators.
Since 2016, LUMINO’s success has echoed far beyond Montreal. Numerous cultural districts around the world have hosted the installations, which have been presented 267 times in 100 cities in 14 countries on 5 continents. Quartier des Spectacles International, a non-profit organisation affiliated with the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership, was founded in 2022 to manage touring operations for the installations and helps position LUMINO and Montreal as global leaders in digital art and design for public space.
LUMINO is made possible by the financial support of the Ville de Montréal, Tourisme Montréal, and by the participation of several co-exhibitors: Place des Arts, Complexe Desjardins, Montréal centre-ville, Place Ville Marie (PVM), Palais des congrès de Montréal, SDC Quartier latin, BAnQ, Le Central, The Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth, and UQAM.
