Doing things differently. It’s not just in politics that the expression applies. In the world of contemporary Quebec art, two women, directors of university galleries to boot, have put together an exhibition driven by initiatives that challenge norms, shake up preconceptions and received ideas.
In the exhibition hall, in five exhibition halls to be precise, Louise Déry and Marie-Hélène Leblanc confront the false fold, which “slyly distorts a good part of reality.” “False folds by hypotheses,” says the title of the event, two parts of which, those of the galleries of UQAM and the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO), were inaugurated this first week of September.
Of astonishing magnitude, but increasingly less rare – this season only projects taking place in several cities are expected -, False folds by assumptions (FPPH) extends to the four corners of Quebec, from Gatineau to Grand-Métis, from Saguenay to Sherbrooke, via Montreal. It brings together thirteen artists or collectives (two duos, in fact) and brings together, not to say intertwines, artistic freedom and scientific research.
Alternative facts of the 21ste centurya set of sculptures and statements by Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, are among them, two years after their first exhibition. Also included are the pseudo-documentary stories about the beluga by Maryse Goudreau, who exhibited this summer on the theme of hearsay at the Trois-Rivières biennial. Sophie Jodoin turns a cookbook towards the carnal, while Emmanuelle Léonard wonders, and asks gardeners, whether horticulture is a science or an art.
The works have been grouped around issues that concern, among other things, language, territories or institutions. There are some that are highly politicized, such as Why should I stop? by Leila Zelli, a two-video installation in which women practice an Iranian sport reserved for men. Others look at distortions in art history, like Mélanie Myers’ project, which appropriates the very masculine land art.
False folds by assumptions Does she want to test our faith in the sciences (pure and social)? She “touches on the hierarchy of knowledge,” replies Louise Déry, director of the Galerie de l’UQAM and instigator of the project. The best example is that Missed Weathera work by the Club de prospection figurée (Magali Baribeau-Marchand and Mariane Tremblay). The installation, which is made up of a multitude of altered objects, including rotary telephones, a wind chime and lab coats decorated with buttons, is inspired by the very amateur yet closely followed science of a Saguenay meteorologist. Exhibited in Gatineau alongside fake news (fake news) denounced by Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, Missed Weather completes a program where credibility and poetry coexist.
Against smooth things
The commissioners wanted to tackle these creases because the academic research environment, their environment, is affected by them. Adopting new attitudes would make it possible to determine “what weakens the method, wrinkles the meaning, subordinates the facts to mirages”, they write in a text published in The Duty.
” [Le faux pli]it’s something you know there because the ironing is not done, to use the textile metaphor, says Louise Déry, met in her gallery in the middle of the assembly. There is a trace of something worrying. The false fold makes even more visible what would be a deviance, a gap.
“False folds create smoothness,” says Marie-Hélène Leblanc, director of the Galerie UQO, where the exhibition was already ready. “These are boxes to check [lors des demandes de subvention]obligations… It makes things smooth and these are creases.”
Science has been so targeted that the curatorial duo has adopted its methods, from the exhibition notebook reproducing research sheets to the preliminary stages held since 2022 (a symposium and two “workshops”). Added to this is the participation of Rémi Quirion, Quebec’s chief scientist, who was present “especially at the beginning,” he says on the phone, “to think out loud.” He hopes that the exhibition will encourage people to do research differently.
“If, every time I take Highway 20 between Montreal and Quebec, I never stop, there are places, villages that I will never know. You have to take back roads to make discoveries,” he believes, suggesting that this is possible even in his field, neuroscience.
Rémi Quirion’s participation also took financial form: the Fonds de recherche du Québec, of which he is the CEO, contributed “tens of thousands” of dollars to hold the conference. False folds by assumptions.
Geographically dispersed, neither itinerant nor identical from one address to another, the exhibition will only be seen in its entirety by a minority of people. Its authors have nevertheless circumvented (a little) the problem with an unusual shelf called “FPPH device”, a sort of portable museum in the style of Marcel Duchamp, author of the Box-in-suitcaseEquipped with its own system, each of the five locations offers, in addition to the works exclusive to it, a panorama of False folds by assumptions.
“Group exhibitions often have a common thread. Here, it is very tight,” acknowledges Marie-Hélène Leblanc. “The works go in different directions, deliberately. Already here, we are doing things differently.”