“The idea of the archive is something that has always interested me,” confides Eunice Bélidor from the outset on the occasion of the presentation at MAI (Montreal, intercultural arts) of The Traces that Remain. The newly independent curator (she notably worked at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts until the end of January 2023), author and researcher studies the contribution of epistolary writing in the creation of emotional archives. “How else could I keep thinking about it?” » she raises.
The idea of erasing people also intrigues him. “There is always this discourse around me which says that I am the first to do things, but that is impossible,” she says. And she wonders why conversations that have already happened are repeated. “People often act like it’s the first time we’ve talked about it, like it doesn’t exist. »
It was then that the desire to translate these ideas into an exhibition was born. “Most of the time I question the same thing, but in several variations,” she explains. The carte blanche that MAI offered her for her first exhibition as an independent curator is therefore timely.
If the concept of an immaterial trace had already started to make its way into Eunice Bélidor’s head, it was a conversation with the artist Po BK Lomami — whose work aksanti 33 refers to several purposes, including those of a family presence, personal events and medical habits — which, in some way, allowed it to come to fruition. “Po, who describes his practice as an intervention practice, told me: ‘You can take a photo or a video of a performance, but how do you keep track of it?’ That’s when I told myself there was something to explore! » remembers the commissioner.
She then wonders who are the people around her with whom similar conversations about archives and traces have already taken place. And it doesn’t take long for the name Shaya Ishaq to pop into his mind. “She had previously told me that she had a special relationship with her grandmothers and aunts, from whom she learned weaving, and we talked about how we could continue to pass on this knowledge when someone died,” mentions Eunice Bélidor. According to her, the video offers Shaya Ishaq — whose a boundless love pays homage to her family’s lost line of matriarchs and focuses on rites of passage, love and rituals — the possibility of probing two zones, that of the living and that of those who have passed away.
I am often called upon to highlight artists who have been forgotten, but at the same time, I realize that these artists have not been forgotten, they have been deliberately put aside
“Each person experiences mourning in their own way, but there is often this idea of wanting to keep in memory the deceased person, memories of things that we cannot necessarily recover with a photo or papers,” underlines Eunice Bélidor.
For her, mourning is an excellent way to explain that there are intangible archives of which everyone tries to preserve traces. “All the memories, the moments, the smells… We can’t really keep those kinds of things, but they exist and can resurface at any time,” she adds. From then on, these archives become an impalpable register and leave traces that can never be indexed like material.
The vision of the artists above all
“Often, when we curate, we are attracted by a work and that is what will nourish the project. But I am especially attracted to artists, explains Eunice Bélidor. I had no idea what Shaya Ishaq’s video was going to look like until the day before editing! »
Zinnia Naqvi and Lan “Florence” Yee, who respectively propose The Professor’s Desk And Tangerine, After Grapefruit In The Traces that Remain, have not escaped this rule either. “Of all my experiences working with artists, their work will also speak of this trust, of this relationship that we have together,” she continues. And to add: “When I describe the work that I do as a curator, [je dis] that artists have this ability to express in words that I don’t have what I’m trying to express. »
Finally, all these forms of archives which are made available to the public in The Traces that Remain are also an opportunity for Eunice Bélidor to rethink, in general, the history of art. “I am often called upon to highlight artists who have been forgotten, but at the same time, I realize that these artists have not been forgotten, they have been deliberately put aside. »
Why do we choose to give importance to certain things and not others? “That’s exactly what my relationship with the archives is. Why would we need a material trace to consider that something exists? » asks the commissioner. Making exhibitions would therefore be a way of archiving, of engraving in stone these traces that remain.