For its sixth consecutive year, the Museum of Jewish Montreal is participating in the Nuit blanche à Montréal festivities! Join in for an evening of live performance and an immersive art experience playing with cultural identity, visual language and communication.

Immerse yourself in a labyrinth of stories from the past to imagine a future of disrupted communication. Discover The Ocean Between Us, a photo and video based installation by Russian-Jewish artist Yuula Benivolski, inspired by letters written by an imprisoned Jewish Trotskyist dissident poet and journalist on the KGB watch list in the 1970’s.

For one night only,  on Saturday March 2   (9 pm to 1 am), the Museum of Jewish Montreal  (4040 Boul. St. Laurent  #R01)  will be transformed into an ethereal labyrinth, designed by artist Jordanna Ibghy, inviting visitors to immerse themselves completely in Benivolski’s work. Throughout the evening, the museum will host a series of live letter-readings in English, French and Russian. The performers will take turns translating each other’s words, creating a chorus of spoken word. The event is free and open to the public.

“The Ocean Between Us emerged when I came into possession of a stack of letters written by my great granduncle Misha in Moscow to his daughter Nina in Jerusalem in the 1970s,” said Benivolski. “These letters are my most precious possession. To me, they simultaneously represent both the wound and the cure: the physical distance between members of my family, and their coping mechanisms.”

The Museum of Jewish Montreal is a not-for-profit organization that explores and shares the diverse histories and experiences of Montreal’s Jewish community.