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Emporte-moi/Sweep Me Off My Feet at the Musee national des beaux-arts du Quebec | The Indian Act Revisited at Musee huron-wendat | Hugo Nadeau and Sarla Voyer at La Chambre Blanche | Palimpsest/Palimpseste at Atelier d’Estampe Engramme
posted by Claude Chevalot - November 10th, 2009.
Visiting the group exhibition Emporte-moi/Sweep Me Off My Feet at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, I felt like a peeping tom. Sitting quietly in small, dark rooms, like so many secret bedrooms, witnessing bodies falling at the bottom of the sea, silent orgasms and kisses, so many kisses, the feeling was hard to escape. The selection of art work occupies two large and many small rooms of the museum, creating this false impression of intimacy. Musée Curator Nathalie de Blois gathers pieces bearing strong emotions with this show: “Love remains the most implacable and tender of masters. And no music will ever be more disconcerting that the sound of a heart breaking.” These are the two last sentences of de Blois’s text in the exhibition catalogue. They summarize perfectly the feeling of the whole installation.
Michel de Broin and Ève K. Tremblay, SF8 (Vertigo) from the series Honeymoons, 2002, chromogenic print
The chosen pieces use a simple and direct language; a lot of video and photographic works that stage humans like us and the simple gestures of daily life. No need for obscure symbolism, as if love and its train of contradictions were already sufficiently complicated. In one of the alcoves, a video shows men sitting in a shabby bar, the youngest of them gets up and begins signing Roy Orbison’s Crying. His voice is very pure. One by one the other men join in, giving the song an air of outdated operetta treading on the verge of ridicule, but when, at the very end, the camera rests on the young’s man face flooded with tears, the violent and sudden emotion sweeps us off our feet; the pain of the abandonment suddenly so real..
François-Xavier Courrèges, Another Paradise, 2005, video
Elsewhere, on a black and white screen a woman attentively observes her companion immersed in the water of his bathtub and as soon as he shows signs of suffocating, she insufflates air in his mouth, making sure he doesn’t drown. The murmurs and images in this beautiful exhibition left their spark in my soul.
How many of you don’t know about the Indian Act? Raise your hand, don’t be shy! All right, all right, I can’t see your lovely faces anymore behind all the risen arms! Well, first of all you have to know that the Indian Act was written in 1876. The law pretty well treats the Indians as third class citizens not even considered as adults in the eyes of the government. This monolithic and obscure legislative set is still in force today. Louis-Karl Picard Sioui, curator of The Indian Act Revisited at Musée huron-wendat (and also a participating artist) invited seven other native artists to revisit this Law that carries the stench of apartheid. Each in their own way worked on a specific section of the law and with great simplicity revealed the pure absurdity and incoherency of them.
For instance according to article 91 on trading with Indians:
No person may, without the written consent of the Minister, acquire title to any of the following property situated on reserve namely:
a) an Indian grave house;
b) a carved pole;
c) a totem pole;
d)a carved house post or
e) a rock embellished with paintings or carvings.
So Picard-Sioui wrote letters to the different ministers in order to get written consent to take out of the reserve a pebble obviously painted by a very young child in Wendake. In this work, entitled Word for Word, he highlights the ridiculously paternalist character of the Indian act by applying word for word article 91 of the law. The other artists work in the same spirit and make this a MUST SEE of this exhibit. We live in a country that enforces a racist law and many of us are not even aware that such a law exits. This exhibit is a very powerful learning tool. Buy the catalogue and pass it around in your family, it should make for great Christmas party conversation.
This Friday, La Chambre Blanche is launching the web artwork of Hugo Nadeau. Created during his recent residency, this project, initially made for the virtual space, is on this occasion transposed to the physical space of the Gallery for the duration of the weekend. Un bon coup de data (ou beaucoup de data) is a daring proposition gathering a large volume of content taken from the Internet. In an effort to highlight the browser’s interest in discovery, Hugo Nadeau chose to describe an overbid of information in fifteen modules each displaying archives, registers, data banks, and web page labyrinths. The nature of the information does not appear for its usefulness, but as a singular universe built by the artist. Around the complexity of the dense weave of information generated by this project, the incongruous is bound to the poetic in an admitted purpose: to make data-crossing a site for pleasurable surprises.
La Chambre Blanche also welcomes Sarla Voyer’s project Retracer la ville. Connected with facts or locations in her personal history, her artwork reveals an intimate nature expressed by a narrative approach. The artist proposes to walk the streets of Quebec City – where she spent her teenage years – and collect different objects, clues, and elements. What she will find will be reinvested in an installation in order to express another vision of the city. Note on your schedule that the opening of her in situ residency will take place on Friday, November 27th at 5 pm.
Angela Silver
Canadian artists Carolyn Wren and Angela Silver are both exploring the notion of palimpsest in an exhibition at Atelier d’Estampe Engramme that teams their research. By definition, the palimpsest is a manuscript on which the first writings are either washed off or scraped out. New writings are inscribed on the same manuscript and then also washed and so on. The traces left by the many levels of writing become an object of fascination, opening the possibility of a new code or a new language. Wren and Silver explore this theme through engraving. One uses textiles while the other uses obsolete objects pertaining to typewriting in a performative work. The result is food for thought about language and its many different codes
Claude Chevalot lives in Quebec City. She is a freelance writer/translator of works of fiction for adults and children, texts for artists and exhibitions, and various pieces for magazines and the radio. She edits her own blog on contemporary art.
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec: http://www.mnba.qc.ca/Accueil.aspx
Emporte-moi/Sweep Me Off My Feet continues until December 13.
Musée huron-wendat: http://www.museehuronwendat.com/musee/concept.php
The Indian Act Revisited continues until January 10.
La Chambre Blanche: http://www.chambreblanche.qc.ca/fr/index.asp
Atelier d’Estampe Engramme: http://www.meduse.org/engramme
Palimpsest/Palimpseste continues until December 13.
Comments (newest first)
Posted by Terence, 261 days ago on November 11th, 2009
Yes, they are two different exhibitions.
Posted by JAcques, 261 days ago on November 11th, 2009
Hi,
I think there is title missing between the Sweep me off my feet text and the one related to the Indian act. I don't suppose it's the same exhibition... hopefully!