“My goal is to rebuild the entire village,” says photographer Marisa Portolese. In her studio in Rosemont, which she insisted on showing before the interview, her long-term project spreads Goose Village. On the walls and tables: photos, his own, yes, but also those from the archives of the City of Montreal, as well as plans and press clippings.
The village is actually a neighborhood in southwestern Montreal, in Pointe-Saint-Charles, which disappeared in 1964. Marisa Portolese not only aims to reconstruct, in images, this Goose Village (or Village-aux-Oies), she also wants tell his story. The first part, in the form of an exhibition at the Occurrence centre, will be the most family-oriented of the entire project. It features the artist’s father, while the sequel will include protagonists traced via social networks.
“In 1953, my father left a village in Italy [pour aboutir] in another, where he had Montreal and the Farine Five Roses as a view, says Marisa Portolese. He is very attached to the Goose Village. His first home, his first experience. »
20 years ago, the series of portraits beautiful day (2002) revealed the intimate and feminist photography of Marisa Portolese. Since, Beauty of the day II (2014), Beauty of the day III (2016) and other studio sets have confirmed her as the photographer of dignified, assertive, diverse femininity. What she reveals in January breaks with this line.
At the turn of the millennium, the artist already had in mind to unearth the disappeared district, inhabited in turn by populations arriving from Ireland, Eastern Europe and then Italy. Born after its dismantling, she only knows it from what her parents say. Lacking other references and precise data, she puts her idea aside.
“I was finishing my master’s degree, no one had written on it, I didn’t have access to the municipal archives. It was too difficult to start”, she summarizes. An exhibit at the defunct Montreal History Center (Neighborhoods disappeared2011-2013) and a book by Catherine Charlebois and Paul-André Linteau published downstream revive his initial quest.
Since 2019, Marisa Portolese has embarked on what is her first documentary project. The sight of a sad parking lot did not deter her. “I took the time to think about how to put my voice. It came with the vacant lot, the plants, the flowers. It came with the archives, when I saw the apartment wallpapers. In her Goose Village, she assures us, we will find her richly decorated universe.