This text is part of the special section Museums
The McCord Stewart Museum presents the exhibition until January 22, 2023 INCIPIT – COVID 19a reading in photos from spring 2020, in the first months of the health crisis.
Incipit : the term designates the first words of a work. And it is indeed at the prelude to the pandemic, at the time of the very first wave, that this photographic exhibition is interested, made up of 30 images as well as three photo and video projections. Beginning in April, the McCord Stewart Museum — and its President and CEO, Suzanne Sauvage — gave carte blanche to photographer and visual artist Michel Huneault, accustomed to witnessing the impact of collective dramas on the individual. (like the award-winning corpus he produced following the Lac-Mégantic tragedy) to describe the daily lives of citizens in a Montreal shaken by the arrival of COVID-19.
The clash of images
The exhibition takes place in a single room: the dark walls and floor, like the low lighting, create an intimate atmosphere, which gives the images a tenfold power. In the center are integrated Plexiglas panels, the very ones that are now part of our daily lives.
From the entrance, the large format images continuously project scenes of ordinary life under the pandemic: busy caregivers in hot hospital areas, patients on artificial respirators, staff in full white coveralls. From the outset, the visitor plunges back (perhaps a little in spite of himself) into the surreal atmosphere of this early spring 2020: citizens in single file in front of hospitals and shops – at a regulatory distance of two meters –, deserted public spaces and their street furniture wrapped to block access, the Maurice-Richard arena converted into a home for homeless people.
And the dark face of François Legault on television, during his daily meeting with Quebecers for the count of infections and deaths. Images of a world in shock grappling with the reality of an unprecedented health crisis.
In the heart of hot zones
The choice of the iconographic corpus was first dictated by the narrative framework with the objective of telling the first wave around three axes: the public sphere, the private sphere and, finally, the hospital environment. The final selection of the collection was made with the museum team with the intention of declining the emotions experienced at that time.
“When I was finally able to access the hospital in May, it was thanks to the help of two people from the CIUSSS of Verdun and the West Island. On site, the caregivers very well understood the mission of this documentation work and were very collaborative, even if they remained hyperconcentrated on their daily actions. Of course, the photos were taken with the agreement of the patients and their families, as well as the short video projected at the end of a plexiglass corridor which shows a nurse humming softly at the bedside of an intubated man.
“Very early on, the scenographer Pierre-Étienne Locas and I knew that this film would occupy a central place in the corpus,” says the photographer. Many people would have liked to experience this moment of incredible delicacy with their loved ones. At the end of this corridor, an oh so symbolic space of contemplation, the visitor relives, not without emotion, his own experience of the start of the pandemic.
A singularly collective experience
” INCIPIT complements the visitor’s experience during the pandemic, explains Michel Huneault. The exhibition leads her to understand that everyone spent this period in their own way, not necessarily in the same way. In front of these scenes, one is indeed left with the impression of having lived one of the multiple facets of the same collective experience.
As for him, this project enabled him to extract himself from a tunnel in which he felt isolated: “to get out of my own cave of Plato”, he says. The visitor also leaves with a funny feeling: as if today we were struck by a form of collective amnesia, that we had all had the same nightmare, a feeling that this exhibition comes to reactivate.
What comes out of it?
“All the way covered since spring 2020! emphasizes Michel Huneault. And, also, the feeling of solidarity that we observed with people isolated at home or in hospital. The connection between us is not just a threat, it is an added value. This solidarity is reflected in the views taken in health establishments and in front of CHSLDs, but also in this proliferation of rainbow drawings, which in a few weeks have become a symbol of fraternity and benevolence.
On a panel of messages of gratitude towards caregivers and other community actors pay a vibrant tribute. Proof that distancing has indeed been, in this first wave of COVID-19, much more physical than social.
On the sidelines of this exhibition, the McCord Stewart Museum invited the public to participate in the documentation of the pandemic with the project Frame the daily life. Lockdown stories. 4,000 photos of citizens have been shared on social networks (#CadrerLeQuotidien).
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the To have to, relating to marketing. The drafting of To have to did not take part.