student group show /
curator: GABRIELLE SARTHOU

POINTS DE BASCULE
05.12–06.11.2022
Room 1 and 2

ARTISTS

AMÉLIE BÉLANGER / SOPHIE-ANNE BÉLISLE & MYRIAM LANDRY /

THOMAS BOUQUIN / ÉLYSE BRODEUR-MAGNA / SNACK WITCH aka

JONI CHEUNG / JULIE CIOT / DARIA ELAS / IOANA DRAGOMIR /

MURIEL AHMARANI JAOUICH / K089 / MADDIE MCNEELY /

ANNIE-KIM RAINVILLE / REBECCA RAMSEY /

FLORENCE VIAU / NINA VROEMEN

Points de bascule (Tipping Points) evokes that liminal moment before falling, which exists in a vertiginous in-between. It represents the fragile threshold beyond which a modulation, even a tiny one, can tip a system into an entirely new state.

As I looked through all the portfolios, I was able to note the artists’ generational concerns and, in particular, two distinct ways of dealing with the world: by expressing anxiety or by trying to hide this anxiety through aesthetics.

One can envisage a parallel with the way in which capitalism is deployed. Threatening the environmental ecosystem and at the same time engendering a world of stifling and chaotic megalopolises, capitalism also gives rise to an actual economy of the beautiful and an aestheticization of everyday life. In their book L’esthétisation du monde1, Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy observe that by “creating a global chaotic economic landscape while stylizing the everyday world, capitalism is less an ogre devouring its own children than a two-faced Janus2.” Each gallery is conceived as a function of two complementary and consubstantial poles: weakening and aestheticization of the world. Thus, the binarity that emerges between darkness and light is burst apart. Blackness can contain life, and light, sometimes too bright or white, can also burn us.

Weakening of the world refers to the darker side of things. It presents works that capture the essence of factures and destruction.

The gallery contains two video works that point out the state of emergency created by consumerist nonchalance. In Put a ring on it, Nina Vroemen offers a sequence of satellite images taken from Google Maps in which circular marks on Earth mark out sites of resource extraction by human beings, and in Soleil froid, K089 uses black humour to present a unique view of a crumbling dystopic world. Annie-Kim Rainville’s Les grenouilles de la fin du monde also presents choice evidence of such ambient cynicism.

Florence Viau’s Ce que gardent les pierres evokes the Rosetta stone. Here, writing becomes a digital texture resembling barcodes. The work may be read as a commentary on the digitization of the world and of artworks that tend toward the dissolution of material writing.

Some works radiate a state of anxiety associated with things that might normally be thought of as gentle or soft. Hair Care, a collaboration between Sophie-Anne Belisle and Myriam Landry, sticks a forceful, aggressive image onto a vase made of ceramic, a fragile and delicate material. Julie Ciot’s photographs present a similar contrast, juxtaposing sharp, frenetic writing on bouquet or a chaotic and broken reflexion of vegetation.

Amélie Bélanger’s Les choses vivantes, les choses mortes takes the form of crystallized logs that bridge the worlds of the living and the dead. This work links the two galleries by intermixing decomposition and rebirth, shadow and light.

Aestheticization of the world evokes human beings’ ability to “beautify” the things around them, whatever they are.

In Agentivité du satisfaisant?, Daria Elas aestheticizes the theme of mass production by transforming it into videos aimed at calming anxiety—currently very common on social media. Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich’s pictorial works, L’exil de téta Rose and Baba et mumu convey a painful histories camouflaged in bright colours. Aestheticization is also employed in Ioana Dragomir’s This one was making adjectives, which offers a chromatic translation of Anne Carson’s poem-novel Autobiography of Red. In Safekeepings, Maddie McNeely uses the motif of the handrail to define and dictate a path and guide the public while choosing a chromatic rounded treatment in her turned-wood sculptures. Constraining barriers become attractive.

Joni Cheung and Thomas Bouquin juxtapose the banal and the sublime in culinary experience. The sound project From Scratch replays bits of a telephone conversation between Cheung and their father. Cheung reflects on their relationships with restaurants 茶餐廳| cha chaan tengs|tea1. They also clear a path to understanding how these places for sharing food may function as living archives for diasporic communities. Thomas Bouquin’s photograph Lunch is taken from the series Des mondes engloutis, in which he studies the form, history, and myths of île Sainte-Hélène and Île Notre-Dame, two islands situated in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. In the image selected for this exhibition, Bouquin aestheticizes an ordinary meal: soup served in a bread bowl and churros presented in a cardboard basket.

Rebecca Ramsey’s sculpture, Untitled, portrays a search based on motifs recovered from a sewer cover and concrete blocks in ceramics that melt and intermingle. Here, industrial construction materials are embellished and transformed into precious, unique pieces.

Élyse Brodeur’s work, Ceci n’est pas le suicide de ma féminité, appropriates an archaic war machine, like a catapult, to make its primary function of destruction ridiculous. Here, the machine throws confetti on itself when it is activated.

Weakening and Aestheticization of the world are two sides of the same coin; both give us a glimpse of an anxiety-inducing future. Through diversion, humour, derision, amplification, and aestheticization, important reflections on the double nature of our system are raised by the artists in this exhibition. Tipping Points is a wake-up call, for the fall is imminent.

– Gabrielle Sarthou (translated by Kathe Roth)

1.  Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy, L’esthétisation du monde. Vivre à l’âge du capitalisme artiste (Paris: Gallimard, 2013).

2. Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, of choices, of transitions and doors, is represented with two faces: one turned toward the past, the other toward the future.

3.  Cha chaan teng is a style of cafeteria invented in Hong Kong.

BIOS

CURATOR

Gabrielle Sarthou is studying for a master’s degree in art history at UQAM. Their research interest is historiography and colour theory from a feminist point of view. As a curator and art critic, they enjoy connecting art and words; their writings are found in cultural magazines such as Ciel Variable, ESPACE art actuel, and Vie des Arts. Among other things, they co-founded Festival ETC-Expérimentations et Théories Contemporaines and coordinated the Symposium International de Baie-Saint-Paul (2021); they are currently working as a mediator at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and as a research and teaching assistant.

ARTISTS

Amélie Bélanger was born in Montréal and is currently studying for an MFA at Concordia University. She is moved by breakable forces, engages in passing on knowledge, and writes eulogies to things that disappear.

Sophie-Anne Bélisle was born in Trois-Rivières and is currently completing a master’s degree in visual and media arts at UQAM. She uses drawing, video, and micro-intervention and is interested in eroticism in the public space through a queer feminist approach. + Myriam Landry was born in Trois-Rivières and has lived in Tiohti:áke/Montréal for six years. She is a member of the W8banaki (Abenaki) First Nation of the community of Wôlinak. She has been making pottery as a hobby for almost ten years. In September 2020, she decided to devote more time to this practice to create utilitarian objects that link her engagement in contemporary Indigenous issues to ceramics.

Thomas Bouquin was born in Lyon, France, and has a degree in photography from Concordia University. Currently, he is a master’s student in visual and media arts at UQAM, where he is studying the notions of territory, memory, and fiction. Working in the gap between photographic subjectivity and documentary style, he juxtaposes supposedly contradictory ideas to visually deploy an imaginary space and the personal construction of a site.

Élyse Brodeur-Magna, who holds a BFA with a major in sculpture from Concordia University, lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Currently, she is studying for a master’s degree in visual and media arts at UQAM. In her practice, she reflects on what motivates the transition from inaction to action, mainly through sculpture and installation.

Snack Witch, aka Joni Cheung, was born on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, Stó:lō, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh peoples, colonially known as Vancouver. They are currently studying for an MFA in sculpture and ceramics at Concordia University. In their interdisciplinary research-based practice, they play with the interdependence among objects, place, and identity to navigate discourses of transnationalism, migration, and diasporas as a Canadian-born Hong Kong-Chinese person.

Julie Ciot was born in Laval and is completing a BFA in visual arts at Concordia University, with a major in photography, in 2022. She is interested in the visual translation of the ephemeral nature of life through photographic materiality.

Ioana Dragomir was born in Romania. She holds a bachelor’s degree in studio art from the University of Waterloo and a master’s degree in art history from Western University. She is currently studying for an MFA at Concordia University. She combines her interests in writing and literary criticism with drawing, sculpture, and installation to draw attention to the slippages inherent in language.

Daria Elas was born in Moldavia; she immigrated to Montréal, where she now lives. Currently completing a bachelor’s degree in visual and media arts at UQAM, she expresses her feminist and perceptual approach essentially through installation.

Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich is currently living and working in the unceded Indigenous lands of Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, of the Kanien’kehá:ka peoples, and pursuing an MFA at Concordia University. As a Canadian artist of Armenian, Egyptian, and Lebanese descent, her paintings focus on genealogy, intergenerational trauma, and historical violence.

K089 is a pluridisciplinary artist brought to conscience in Laval, unceded territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederation. Studying for a bachelor’s degree in visual arts at UQAM, their focus is on bringing out psycho-sensory organs.

Maddie McNeely is a visual artist working in sculpture, textiles, and installation, and focusing on the desirability of objects and constructed forms. Based in woodworking and weaving, her practice is rooted in process-oriented exploration and craftsmanship. Born in Toronto, Ontario, she is currently pursuing an MFA in sculpture at Concordia University.

Born in a town in the Basses-Laurentides region, Annie-Kim Rainville now lives in Montréal, where she is currently completing a bachelor’s degree in visual and media arts at UQAM. In her work, humour and handmade production intermix to form a critical look at the territories of the everyday.

Rebecca Ramsey was born in Vernon, BC. She has a BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design and is currently studying for an MFA in sculpture at Concordia University. In her work, she combines ceramics and other materials to explore questions pertaining to energy and matter.

Florence Viau obtained a bachelor’s degree in visual and media arts from UQAM in 2021. Her practice is based on exploration of the materiality of the image by intertwining print arts with painting, sculpture, and drawing. Born in Laval, she now lives and works in Montréal.

Nina Vroemen was born in Gatineau and is pursuing an MFA at Concordia University. In her projects, she aims to quicken the heart through critical research, sensorial inquiry, and immersive fieldwork. Her current research is focused on environmental slow violence and the radical invisible.

The Centre CLARK would like to thank Groupe Canva for their financial contribution to this exhibition.