Programming
Salima punjani
Holding, Release
Holding Release is a gesture of mutual support, hosted at the HALTE. Visitors will be invited to release something that feels heavy for them, and to support someone else with an act of mutual holding.
Participatory installation presented at La HALTE (Parc Sainte-Cunégonde, Montreal) from July 4 to mid-October 2025.
Holding, Release is a gesture of mutual support, hosted at the HALTE. Visitors will be invited to release something that feels heavy for them, and to support someone else with an act of mutual holding.
People will be invited to fill an apothecary bottle with a combination of materials, seal and store it on a shelf. They will take another filled bottle in exchange and follow a series of reflective prompts as they hold it and put it back.
The bottles will have no identifying feature. No way to know who filled the bottle or what they
decided to release. Their stories, their backgrounds, ethnicity, age. It is truly just valuing
someone for their existence, and supporting someone, holding what feels heavy for them no
matter who they are.
What is released is held and what is held will be released.
A collective release gathering will be held on Saturday August 23.
Salima Punjani
Salima Punjani is a multisensory artist grounded in relational aesthetics. A common thread through all of her work is the creation of environments that allow for receptivity of connection. She is particularly interested in how multiple senses can be used to expand the possibilities for people to feel welcome in art spaces as well as to create artful experiences of empathy, intimacy, and connection. Her recent work explores themes such as mutual care, collective grief, rest as resistance to systemic injustice and how medical data can be subverted into finding human connection rather than pathologies.