Artists who practice horticulture, praise so-called weeds, document wild places… This summer, they are honored in Laval, while the exhibition interregnumstitle of the third edition of the Triennale Banlieue!, showcases nature in its prime state.
If environmental issues are already unavoidable, the “living” now seems to be essential. The exhibitions which integrate plants and other specimens of flora or fauna follow one another constantly. They reflect the urgent need to change our relationship with nature. interregnums is of the lot.
“It’s an excellent opportunity to raise awareness,” judge Anaïs Boutin, a biologist approached by the organizers to participate in a round table in mid-August. “Environmental issues can end up being a bit, I dare not say, depressing… It gets heavy. Through art, we can look at them with positive glasses. »
Rigorously supported since 2015 by the Maison des arts de Laval and its “visual arts manager” Jasmine Colizza, the Triennale Banlieue! presents itself this time under ecological airs. With 19 artists and many anchor points on Île Jésus, including in the Saint-François district, rich in agricultural fields and wooded areas, the exhibition highlights the forms that nature takes in the suburban environment.
Experienced curator Marie Perreault designed this program, which is impossible not to compare with those of the Montreal biennial Momenta (2021 version) and the Orange triennial, still in progress in Saint-Hyacinthe. Listening to nature, giving it as an example or, better, taking it into account are features common to these exhibitions which propose to move away from the anthropocene vision of the world.
arts and sciences
An event based on the rejection of preconceptions — those about the suburbs — the Laval triennale explores its themes linking the visual arts to other disciplines. After literature and theatre, it is the turn of geography (or biology) to be the guest.
“We presented the production to the scientists,” says Marie Perreault, who entrusted Yan Romanesky, a geographer close to the artistic community, with setting up a scientific committee. “Their concerns echoed those of the artists, but underlined other things, led to other solutions. »
Anaïs Boutin is part of the committee. The biologist has worked for 15 years near the Rivière des Mille-Îles and has made water quality her battlefield. This leads her to defend wetlands, and also Laval, as an emblematic territory of biodiversity.
The river, according to a defunct nautical club
“People don’t realize that our suburbs are the place in the province where there is the greatest diversity of species. It is not in Mont-Tremblant Park or further north. It’s to the south [du Québec] that we can make the most gains in terms of human-nature balance, but also in the planning of our habits”, says the one who qualifies the mowing of lawns as “manicure” of the development.
The former Montrealer has no shortage of arguments to promote the swamps. However, “mosquito nests”, she specifies, are endangered. The field work carried out by Ariane Plante in a wetland in Laval delighted her. His work comes in a collection of sounds and images — cyanotypes printed directly on the spot, without a sheet being torn out. “I crystallize a fragile environment, affected by development, says the artist, who wanted to document cohabitation. The wooded area is surrounded by fields, farms, a golf course… Many of the sounds do not belong to the natural ecosystem. »
Trees, wastelands and twirls
As old as the history of painting, the representation of nature has never seemed so distant from the past as with the topo offered outside the Maison des arts (unintentionally?) by the Triennale Banlieue!.
There are picturesque sculptures, in limestone, from the symposium Nature-inspired held by the municipal broadcaster in 2008. Nearly three of them, as part of the triennale, a discreet sound installation by the Scenoscome collective invites you to hug a tree and feel its breath. “This bodily experience of the tree makes you aware of its physique, its size, its texture,” says Marie Perreault, who placed the French collective’s sound boxes in six Laval parks.
People don’t realize that our suburbs are the place in the province where there is the greatest diversity of species
The new behaviors are also conveyed by another outdoor intervention all in plants signed Deborah Margo.
In the spirit of the concept of third landscape of the French landscape architect Gilles Clément, she has made a grassy area a haven for weeds. “In a vacant lot, the soil is extremely fertile, with its own ecosystem,” comments Anaïs Boutin. Wastelands, unprotected by regulations, unlike the forest and wetlands, are the first to be developed. Yet they are incredibly rich – birds live only for them, butterflies, full of species. You have to accept that weeds are not just weeds. »
In the exhibition hall, monoculture is targeted more than once, notably in the image-by-image collage of residences and their lawns, as proposed by Marie-Suzanne Désilets, and in the large photographs of burnt forests by Andreas Rutkauskas .
The twisted and artificial relationship with nature is pointed out by Catherine Lescarbeau, whose intervention is based on an exchange with the Center Laval: at the Maison des arts, plastic plants; at the crossroads of shopping, photographs reproducing the vanished decor.
It’s not just bitterness. Humor is present with the bird tools imagined by the duo Ibghy & Lemmens; the magical, with twirling grasses filmed by Louise Noguchi; the playful, with the interactive and noisy installation by Ludovic Boney. This one, placed at the beginning of the course, offers itself as a metaphor of our behavior vis-à-vis nature. As the author of this path lined with plastic bags points out, “we cross it without being aware of our impact, and it takes a spectator who tells us what we have done”.