Hotspots

A hotspot is an area where a wireless signal is made available. For Grassi, memories function as the activators—the signals—that generate her paintings In Hotspots, created for the 2020 Pictura Montréal triennial, Grassi draws on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space to explore the home as a site of memory, refuge, and anxiety—particularly resonant during the pandemic. Her ghostly, hollowed-out spaces act as repositories of memory, built through translucent veils of color and texture that layer like sediment, evoking both the accumulation and erosion of time. Unlike her Lifelines series which was created simultaneously, Grassi omits line to focus on space itself, allowing atmosphere, absence, and emotional resonance to shape each composition.