Top Dog in the City

Across the city

As you travel down Avenue du Parc toward downtown, there’s a certain moment when Montreal changes. The rhythm shifts, the buildings get closer together. It’s a route that Chien Champion, whose real name is Felipe Arriagada-Nunez, knows by heart. As a child of Mile End he grew up in this flow and finally realized a simple truth: “The world is all about movement!” His carte blanche project explores the idea of the city as a passage, a transition, a space to be tamed. 

“There’s something about moving around that shows you how a place works. You can then find a sense of belonging there,” he says.

Drawing between two worlds

Born in Montreal to Chilean parents, he grew up between here and elsewhere, immersed in a continuous cross-pollination of cultures. “Even as a child, I could see an obvious difference between the drawings I made in Chile and the ones I made in Montreal.”

In Chile: soccer, cousins, anime. In Montreal: hockey, skateboarding. North American influences came to the fore, and he developed a style echoing Franco-Belgian comics. It was a more narrative-driven, more structured mode.

Those influences can still be seen in his current work, where different comic book tropes overlap, like so many layers of a perspective shaped by movement. Chien Champion’s drawings don’t try to reproduce reality. Instead they extend it, taking inspiration from life experiences that he stretches, transforms and shifts into a kind of expanded reality. 

Living in chaos

His images often overflow the frame. Simultaneous scenes, multiple micro-narratives, ordered disorder: there’s overload, but it’s always playful and joyful. “I’m at ease with a certain measure of chaos,” he says. “I grew up in a big family, with lots of people, lots of noise. You have to learn to find your place in that setting, and you have to step back and figure out how to live in a whole that’s bigger than yourself. I like that a lot.”

Chaos, really? It seems more like a sensitive form of organization, a way of being together. In Chien Champion’s opinion sports, particularly soccer, are among the most powerful forms of expression. “When you’re in a stadium and everyone is in sync, cheering together, it’s a very powerful moment.”

Meanwhile, on the field, identities coexist. “We all arrive with our own way of playing, our passion, our country’s jersey, certain cultural norms. But once the ball is in play, we’re all the same.”

A character with fresh eyes

That’s the spirit in which Chien appears. Although he’s a minimalist, almost schematic character, he’s rich in meaning. “He allows me to take a more optimistic view, see the light, bring people together.”

Through Chien, Felipe simplifies things without losing any meaning. He condenses. Just three elements are enough: the dog, the bag and the scarf. Three symbols of a journey, but also of adaptation. “The scarf represents the relationship with the cold, here in Quebec. The colourful checkered bag represents the south. It’s a meeting of two worlds.”

Chien is an open figure. He doesn’t embody a fixed identity, but a point of view: that of the person who arrives, observes and learns to see.

An immersive urban stroll

In Bonjour Chien, d’ici et d’ailleurs, all these ideas are embodied in urban space. The walk follows the arrival of a character discovering the city and seeking to find a place there. “It’s the story of a dog who arrives with his luggage, looking for a home.” From one installation to the next, Chien watches, plays and transforms. Each scene becomes a way of connecting with the city.

Video projections set the tone at the Grande Bibliothèque, near the Saint-Laurent metro station and on the façade of Édifice Wilder | Espace danse. The projections blend fragments of memory with images of the city. Near Esplanade Tranquille, a sculpture of Chien marks L’arrivée – the arrival. With his bag in hand, he settles into the city and gets in sync with its rhythm, in that frozen moment when everything remains to be discovered.

Then, on Sainte-Catherine Street West, a marquee mounted on a cherry picker draws the eye skyward. Part performance poster, part mobile structure, the installation evokes a city under construction—and Chien is invited to be part of it. Nearby, several narrative posts punctuate the route, a kind of poetic signage.

At Place des Festivals, everyone is invited to Le jeu – playtime. A soccer field, ping-pong tables and a basketball hoop transform the large plaza into a gathering place. Inside Complexe Desjardins, Chien’s friends and family join the party, evoking family snapshots. On Phillips Square, a sculpture of a seated Chien observes passersby and learns the rhythms of the city.

At the Eaton Centre, a Chien wearing oversized shoes navigates a world that’s still too big for him. At Place Montréal Trust, the character transforms into a clock! Carrying time with him like a lived experience, he embodies the slow process of integration, where experience eventually adjusts to the rhythm of the place. At Place Ville Marie, Chien blends into the landscape, like a living postcard, capturing the present moment while creating memories. Finally, in front of The Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth, Chien curls up in his bag. A refuge as much as a memory, the object becomes a symbol of everything we carry with us.

Home, carried in a bag

At the heart of the journey is a single recurring object: the bag. It’s much more than an accessory; it acts as an interior architecture, where memories and trajectories are condensed. “It’s a kind of bag you’ll see all over the world. It carries entire lives.” Inspired by bags associated with migration, it embodies a simple idea: one can be here, while coming from away.

Living in a place doesn’t mean erasing who we once were. And it’s in the coexistence of memories and the present moment that the possibility of a home is gradually built.