AJF Weekend – Montreal 2026

Join us for AJF Weekend: Montreal
AJF Weekends are a new way to gather with Art Jewelry Forum: shorter, more accessible programs that preserve the depth of exchange, access, and conversation that define AJF travel. Open to members and nonmembers alike.

Our inaugural weekend in Montreal offers a rare opportunity to experience new work at the moment it enters the field—and to come together around it, sharing perspectives in ways that are difficult to replicate on our own.

Designed to be focused and easy to attend, AJF Weekend: Montreal brings together an intimate group of artists, curators, and collectors for a series of visits, conversations, and shared experiences across Montreal’s contemporary jewelry scene.

Cohosted with gallerist Noel Guyomarc'h, this two-day, small-group program will center around the opening of Dispatch from the Colonies, a new exhibition by South Africa–based artist Geraldine Fenn at Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h. Developed through the AJF Solo Exhibition Award, this exhibition represents the culmination of an extended period of research and making.

The works on view will explore power dynamics in the European colonization of Africa in a number of ways. Fenn will continue her series of narrative pieces that reinterpret historical portrait jewelry in silver and trade beads. She explored micromosaic, a technique new to her. She has also further expanded a collaborative project with the beading collective Marigold, from Zimbabwe, that translates pixelated versions of the historical portrait jewels into woven beaded panels.

“Signs of wealth and prestige in the parlors of Enlightenment Europe, [cabinets of curiosity] were often metaphorically spattered with the blood of suppressed people in the colonies,” states Fenn. Many of the artefacts in the cabinets formed the basis of museum collections. “As an African of European descent I find myself questioning the actions of the colonials across Africa, and these pieces are about starting a conversation—turning the tables on the colonists by turning them into the objects being collected, preserved behind glass, looked at and exoticized.”

Program highlights include (subject to change)

• A studio visit with Aurélie Guillaume. Experience her process up close!
• A breakfast gathering at Galerie Noel Guyomarc'h. Tour Dispatch from the Colonies with Geraldine Fenn herself
• A curator-led tour of Wearable Art, at Musée des métiers d’art du Québec. Brings together 14 Quebec creators—primarily jewelers—showing a wide variety of works, materials, and techniques illustrating current trends
• A curator-led visit to the newly reinstalled national museum galleries. More than 800 objects: jewelry, textiles, glass, silverware, ceramics, furniture, crafts, and industrial design by 400+ artists from around the world
• A celebratory dinner with Noel Guyomarc'h and Geraldine Fenn
• Optional Sunday breakfast

The weekend begins Friday afternoon and concludes Sunday morning, making travel easy on either end. The schedule is intentionally paced to allow time for both structured visits and informal conversation.

Captions: (Left to right) Geraldine Fenn, photo courtesy of Geraldine Fenn; brooch by Geraldine Fenn, Colonial Comeuppance I, 2022, photo courtesy of the artist; Montreal Ferris Wheel, montrealsecret.co