21 WADE AVE #2 | TORONTO

CELIA PERRIN SIDAROUS | Into the house of the heart, | 2 May to 13 June 2026

with keys and napkins and everything*

The house will cure us; the fourth indwelling of the [angel].

In the house are all of the remnants of the past present future all of the tools for locks (door, hair; keys, ribbons, clips, brushes, dyes, conditioners, containers for), papers (folders, clips, staplers, brushes, inks/dyes, containers for (various)), screens (windows, electronic, silk, handles, brushes, inks/dyes, containers for (permanent or affixed)). These are the surfaces on which we map memory, access it through physical/liminal portals (embodied in the key, bronze), through the writ- ten word (scribbled, typed, painted, spat out on paper, printed image), and through various modes of the seen (seen echoed back audibly through sound, or in spurts of light on the monitor, or pressed through silk adding layer to the ground/paper, or simply by looking out the window; frame).

In the house there are of course stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks of imprints and memories degrading through sun and dust and friction and the never-ending weight of eternity however and both in deference and counterpoint to all of this we have the movement movement movement movement movement forward—some say that it never changes, the stream, one person has said about another that it’s always the same thing, anyway—and with this élan the dust éclate and the stacks become sharp whorls barrelling down hallways and into the gleam of daylight and connection and society and still we will be cured even with this house externalized and it is this perpetual movement in and out that does not constrain but rather makes more secure the binds the hands held the sweet ribbons that tie us all together.

Another said that the major work lies within; within this house of the heart, and it is the work, or rather, the Work, to translate this essential project (or substance). The illustration of the house; the ways in which we can communicate the feeling of being cured, of being in the bastion of the fullest of love, in the light, the indwelling, and this revelation requires both an exposing and an obscuring, because what could be more untranslatable than intrigue or laughter or a hiccup? These things require also an important architecture in the excavation of the house outside of the house remaining tied to the Abbey of the heart. And so we dance, and dance as the images whirl around and radiate like magic lanterns, the smell of gasoline magnificent in the night as we remember how memory ignites the passion and the heart. The shape of the whorls and the whirl is a circle, inside of this circle is a smaller one, the circle is divided into four (traditionally) and its inner chamber is, always, referred to as its heart, illustrated thus or with a flower (rose, normally). This is an illustration of the past present future conflated into one concentrated disk, the magic lantern of the psyche.

— Stephanie E. Creaghan

*From The House Above the Sea by Chiara Barzini

Into the house of the heart, borrows its title from the poem Description of a Mandala (1976) by the artist and and occultist Angus MacLise

Stephanie E. Creaghan is a video artist and film maker. They live and work in Montréal.

Celia Perrin Sidarous is an image-based artist living and working in Montréal. Her works have been featured in numerous solo and collective exhibitions in Canada and abroad: Patel Brown (Toronto), Foreman Art Gallery (Lennoxville), McCord Museum (Montréal), Centre CLARK (Montréal), Embassy of Canada Prince Takamado Gallery (Tokyo), Norsk Billedhoggerforening (Oslo), CONTACT Photography Festival (Toronto) and FOCUS Photography Festival (Mumbai), Esker Foundation (Calgary), Banff Centre (Banff), WWTWO (Montréal), VU (Québec City) and Gallery 44 (Toronto). Her work was included in the Biennale de Montréal 2016 — Le Grand Balcon / The Grand Balcony, at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. She is one the five laureates of the Prix en art actuel MNBAQ 2023, offered by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. She was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2019, and is the recipient of the Prix Pierre-Ayot 2017, as well as the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award 2011. Her works are present in private and public collections, most notably at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and the Walter Phillips Gallery.

The artist wishes to thank Albert Sidarous, Lucie Sidarous, Rafik Sidawy and Marie Khouzam.