Lydia Yakonowsky (born in 1977), Precarious Balance Theory, 2026, UHD video projection, 5 min (loop). Courtesy of the artist. Photo MMFA, Julie Ciot
Lydia Yakonowsky (born in 1977), Precarious Balance Theory, 2026, UHD video projection, 5 min (loop). Courtesy of the artist. Photo MMFA, Julie Ciot
Lydia Yakonowsky
The sixth creation to be presented in the Digital Canvas project, Precarious Balance Theory is projected onto the facade of the MMFA’s Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion every evening from sunset to 11 p.m. In this work, Montreal artist Lydia Yakonowsky reinterprets the economic concepts of general equilibrium to envision an unstable, fragile and personal form of it.
From Abstract to Sensory to Inner Experience
Points, curves, markers and other visual symbols borrowed from the language of statistics are arranged and amassed to the point of creating a made-up model whose aestheticization and lustre come to override its analytic function.
When viewed successively from different angles, the process reveals new relationships without ever fully divulging the framework behind their structuring. Configurations appear, are redrawn and proliferate: what seems at one moment to strike a precarious balance soon dissolves, only to be reconstituted elsewhere.
The artist thus prompts us to reflect on our desire to assign stable and intelligible form to what, naturally, is in flux, tenuous and constantly renewed.
Lydia Yakonowsky is a Montreal-based artist whose digital-art practice extends into film, architectural projections and immersive works. She transforms the visual codes specific to statistical graphics and certain economic concepts to explore the relationships between abstract systems, sensory experiences and interior worlds. The deliberately excessive embellishment of such codes, stripped of all data points and integrated into dense and ever-changing compositions, is a recurring feature of her art.
Her works have been shown in Canada and internationally, notably at the International Festival of Film on Art and at MUTEK in Montreal, 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 was the Grand Prix winner of the SAT Fest in Montreal and recipient of the Janus – Best Art & Experimental Film award presented by the Jena Fulldome Festival in Germany.
Lydia Yakonowsky. Photo Lydia Yakonowsky
Credits and acknowledgements
This creation is presented in collaboration with the international festival of digital creativity and electronic music MUTEK. It forms part of Digital Canvas, a project made possible thanks to funding from Tourisme Montréal’s Fonds de maintien des actifs stratégiques en tourisme (FMAST) program and the Gouvernement du Québec.
The artist thanks the MMFA, MUTEK, Claudine Hubert and Marie-Laure Saidani, as well as Irène Yakonowsky, Alexandra Guerin, Manuel Foglia and Isis Sadek.
