Local · October 21, 2026

Digital Canvas: Lydia Yakonowsky’s New Work at MBAM

Montreal’s Musée des beaux-arts presents Lydia Yakonowsky’s latest digital creation, on display until April 4, 2027, as part of the MBAM’s Digital Canvas series.

On October 21, 2026, the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (MBAM) unveiled a new digital artwork by Montreal-based artist Lydia Yakonowsky. Titled La théorie des émois funambules, this immersive piece is accessible to pedestrians along Sherbrooke Street until April 4, 2027, as part of the MBAM’s Digital Canvas project.

Yakonowsky’s work surrounds viewers with a moving visual landscape made up of curves, points, markers, and other symbols. The installation encourages reflection on the human desire to bring order to uncertainty and the ever-changing nature of experience. The artist transforms visual codes from statistical graphics and economic concepts into layered, evolving compositions.

This creation is the sixth artistic project realized for the MBAM’s Digital Canvas, a series made possible by financial support from the Fonds de maintien des actifs stratégiques en tourisme (FMAST) of Tourisme Montréal, with additional funding from the Quebec government. The initiative brings contemporary digital art into public urban spaces.

Lydia Yakonowsky is known for her work in digital art, including film, architectural projection, and immersive installations. Her practice explores the relationships between abstract systems, sensory experience, and the inner world. Her art often features deliberately excessive ornamentation of visual codes, stripped of data and integrated into complex, evolving compositions.

Yakonowsky’s works have been exhibited in Canada and internationally, including at the Montreal MUTEK festival, the Shanghai International Film Festival, the Forum des images in Paris, the Istanbul Digital Art Festival, and the International Festival of Science Visualization in Tokyo. In 2026, she received the Grand Prix at the SAT Fest in Montreal and the JANUS award for Best Art & Experimental Film at the Fulldome Festival in Jena, Germany.

The MBAM’s Digital Canvas project, through which Yakonowsky’s work is presented, continues to engage the public with innovative digital art, enriching Montreal’s cultural landscape and offering new ways to experience art outside traditional museum settings.

Why it matters

This installation offers Montreal residents and visitors a unique opportunity to engage with digital art in a public space. By integrating complex visual languages into an accessible urban environment, Lydia Yakonowsky’s work invites viewers to reconsider ideas of order and transformation, contributing to the ongoing dialogue between technology, art, and everyday experience.

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