2026 Webster Library Exhibitions

Owning Our Histories Zine Exhibit: Celebrating DIY Archives from Queer and BIPOC MTL

February 13 – March 17, 2026

LB-2 wooden display cases and Discovery Counter

This exhibition showcases radical English-language zines from Montreal's queer and BIPOC communities.

The exhibit will feature dozens of rare and important zines from the 1980s to today from Montreal and elsewhere, from riot grrl zines to beautifully produced queer and BIPOC expressions. Zines have always been how communities document themselves. For generations, Montreal's queer and BIPOC artists have used this accessible, DIY format to capture the full spectrum of their lives: handmade artists' books, community magazines, organizing manuals that hold political work, creative experiments, humor, rage, and joy.

These are grassroots archives, not institutional collections. They're built by the communities they document. Started without permission. Made with whatever resources were available. Preserved because people recognized that what they created mattered, even if mainstream institutions didn't.

Zines are cheap to produce, easy to distribute, and impossible to censor. This fluidity has made them the perfect medium for documenting what gets left out of official records. These collections represent what communities chose to make, share, and save. They're proof of continuous DIY cultural production spanning decades.

The zines in this exhibit are drawn from the collections of ARCMTL/ Expozine, the Concordia Fine Arts Reading Room, Les Archives gaies du Québec, QPIRG Concordia, and QPIRG McGill.

This exhibit is part of "Owning Our Histories: Celebrating Queer BIPOC DIY Archives", a series of ten free public events (February 13 – March 29) exploring how communities create, share, and preserve their own histories. This project is made possible in part thanks to funding from the Government of Canada.

Owning Our Histories was curated by ARCMTL, whose Mile Ex documentation centre holds the last 24 years of Expozine (North America's largest bilingual zine fair), Distroboto (a network of art vending-machines), and the ephemera of the city’s DIY publishing scene. In addition, the exhibit features zines from the collections of the Concordia Fine Arts Reading Room, Les Archives gaies du Québec, QPIRG Concordia; QPIRG McGill, selected by their archivists.

Vernissage; Curator Talk: February 13, 4–6 p.m., LB-361 (Friends of the Library Room)

For more information – arcmtl.org