esse arts + opinions was founded in 1984 at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal) as a scrappy publication documenting artistic practices across the different regions of Quebec. In those early years, the magazine focused on the conditions of art-making in the province — who was making what, where, and under what circumstances. It became a nonprofit in 1987, and over the following decades evolved from a regional chronicle into one of Canada’s most respected bilingual art magazines.
The transformation accelerated in 2002 with a major editorial and administrative overhaul, and in 2007 the magazine became fully bilingual in French and English, opening its pages to international distribution and readership. Today, esse is published three times a year and covers an ambitious range of contemporary practices — visual arts, performance, video, digital arts, experimental theatre, and all forms of socially engaged or site-specific intervention. Each issue is built around a theme: Water, Plants, Agriculture, Resilience, Abstraction — subjects examined through critical essays and artist portfolios.
The magazine has won multiple National Magazine Awards and Prix d’excellence from the Société de développement des périodiques culturels québécois, and its annual Vendu-Sold benefit auction, running since 2009, has become a fixture of Montreal’s art calendar. esse regularly appears at international art fairs including Paris Photo, Frieze, and the Armory Show — ensuring that Canadian contemporary art has a presence on the global stage.
For anyone engaged with contemporary art that takes social, political, and environmental contexts seriously — and who appreciates a magazine that does the same — esse has been providing that critical space for four decades.
<a href="https://esse.ca/">Visit esse