Montreal artist aims to empower immigrant youth by bringing art into the classroom

Quebec artist Veronica Mocklerjokes that she's a "weirdo artist" at least, she wouldn't fault her group of high school students for seeing it that way.

Mockler partnered with Turbine, a localorganization that marries pedagogy with art-making practice, to create a specialproject with students at Jeanne-Mance High School in Montreal's Plateau neighbourhood.

Her planto create some "weird conceptual video art" with a group of 15 new immigrant students in an orientation class.

The result isa multimediapiece featuring film, sound, photography and performance calledLes Interprtes.

The kids in the class come from diverse backgrounds, but they have a few things in common: they're all relative newcomers to Quebecand they were all broughttogether to learn French in a hurry.

Mocklerdescribed her process with the students as "exploratory," saying that her focus wason creating "a platform for expression."

"My whole goal with this project was not to decide for them, not to tell themto speak about a specific subject matter," she said."I really didn't want to do that. I really wanted to let them come tome."

As soon as you mention the word "immigrant," an audiencemight come to expect a certain agenda or narrative,Mocklersaid.

"People kind of expect that it's going to be thisdramatic story about the migration over here, and how hard it was," she said. "But the kids, most of the time, didn't really feel like talking about that."

In her project, she aimed to empower the youth in the class to take ownership of their stories and voices, and to think about framing and storytelling.

Most of all, she wanted to allow them the freedom to explore and create on their own.

"They're not, like, immigrant teenagers. They're teenagers who have immigrated," said Mockler.

Over the course of six sessions, the class explored different mediums and wrote an artistic manifesto.

"I was trying to find ways for them to take control of the information they want to put out."

Sarah Salsabila, 16, immigrated to Montreal with her family in January 2018.

In an interview, Salsabila said it was a lot of fun working on the art project and experimenting with different tools and techniques.

On the theme of ownership, she described one activity where students were asked to speak on camera about a secret.

"I talked about my secret, but we unplugged the microphone, because I don't want anyone to hear it," she said.

The next presentation ofLes Interprteswill be on May 9at 8 p.m., during l'ATSA'sCuisine ta ville eventat Place des Arts.The video screening and live performance will be followed by an artist talk.