“Baptisms”, “funerals”, “ceremonies”… many words in the titles of Annie Baillargeon’s works leave no doubt: her exhibition deals with rituals. But are these current rituals, social practices often desacralized, which allow us to mark the moments of our lives, to create being together, of the community in a profane way? There is something much more unusual, mysterious, dark and disturbing, in this body of work created by Annie Baillargeon.
In these images reigns an atmosphere that will evoke occult forces. These works show groups of women, often at night, sometimes gathered around a bonfire, seeming to dance or perform unusual performances. These women, sometimes veiled or masked, perform mysterious actions… In these images, we find Mutation Rituals, with braziers and incantatory pyres, almost esoteric and magical rites performed by initiates. It will be understood that these women are practicing rituals invoking an imaginary associated with witchcraft, more particularly with witches, these women denounced as being evil.
But in a – magical – reversal, these women are not instruments of the devil and evil. Those who have been considered as “lost” are transformed here into “rebellious” and especially into “scouts”… These agents of “perdition”, which they have been able to embody in many societies, for centuries, these “sorceresses” become “glimmers”, and even forces for a Ritual of burial of submissions.
Baillargeon, who received “a Protestant religious education” and who, in her own words, was “raised in a severe and even austere environment”, shows women who are a bit like bad seeds that have successfully blossomed – expressions that found in the title of the exhibition. In a mystical reversal – a magical appropriation – the discourse against women, which was embodied among other things by witch hunts, is here transformed into a “form of resistance”.
In these inkjet prints of photographs, taken in 2011 and enhanced with watercolor in 2023, the visitor will certainly find links with the fantastic work of Francesca Woodman, an artist particularly appreciated by Baillargeon. But we will also feel formal and spiritual links with the Symbolist art of the end of the 19th century.e century. The watercolour, here used to create a whole network of highlights, spots, filaments, seems to parasitize the photographic images and the realism that is wrongly associated with it. The pigments blur the photo with areas of flickering, networks of energy flows, strange areas that create an astonishing visual tension. Art is expressed there as a magic act.
Note also, in the small room of the gallery, a whole series entitled Care postures (2022), produced as part of Yahndawa, “exchange project between the artistic communities of Wendake and Quebec”. Visitors will find, among other things, a Reverse broom pose which, too, will evoke diverted actions…
Maria Ezcurra at Project Casa