Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art | The poetry of Lili Reynaud-Dewar

The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal hits hard with the sculptures and videos of Lili Reynaud-Dewar. Creating complex, theoretical and poetic works – nourished by literature and activism – the renowned French visual artist is interested in a transgressive and evolving artistic practice. And it feels good…

The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal has unfortunately lost its luster since moving to smaller temporary spaces at Place Ville Marie. And its never-ending architectural transformation project… not to begin. “The new MAC should open its doors in the fall of 2020”, we wrote on May 14, 2016! Discouraging. Under the circumstances, we can only be delighted that curator Mark Lanctôt had the flair (in 2018) to invite Lili Reynaud-Dewar to Montreal. Even before she received the prestigious Marcel Duchamp prize in 2021. Hats off!

Because Lili Reynaud-Dewar oxygenates the mind. It’s a real phenomenon, with its nude dance performances, its original and strong videos and its alternative engagements. “We started this discussion with Mark Lanctôt about coming to exhibit in Montreal while I was in residence in Rome and starting to work on my film on Pasolini,” says the artist, daughter of the French poet Daniel Reynaud.

This film, Roma, 1^er and November 2, 1975, which took more than eight months to produce, is projected on four screens. “The MAC should have had the scoop had it not been for the pandemic,” she says. Finally, I showed it at the Center Pompidou, as part of the Duchamp Prize. »

The video was shot with Pasolini’s friends and the plastic artist’s mother, Mireille Rias, who introduced her to cinema in her youth. It starts from the prophetic interview that Pier Paolo Pasolini gave on 1^er November 1975, a few hours before his death, to journalist Furio Colombo. Lili Reynaud-Dewar was also inspired by the film Pasolini (2014), by Abel Ferrara, and Pasolini’s posthumous book, Oilpublished 17 years after his tragic death. Roma, 1^er and November 2, 1975 is thus an immersion in a social and political history which is also somewhat ours when we know, today, the evolution of the world and the planetary damage linked to our consumption of fossil fuels.

Because Lili Reynaud-Dewar is not content to return to the not completely solved assassination of Pasolini. She also intertwines many elements of reflection in her video, to shake up our expectations and get out of the usual narrative frameworks.

Rome, 1 and 2 November 1975 (excerpt), 2019-2021

Dans une salle adjacente est diffusée une trentaine de ses vidéos silencieuses qui ont fait sa renommée depuis 10 ans. Des vidéos où Lili Reynaud-Dewar, qui a suivi des cours de danse jusqu’à l’âge de 18 ans, danse au sein de divers environnements culturels, dans le plus simple appareil. Des chorégraphies muettes, agréables à regarder. L’artiste a un beau corps, bouge bien, avec souplesse. La performance a un côté ludique qui fait que ces œuvres ont une belle fraîcheur. On la voit même danser dans un champ où broutent des moutons !

« J’en avais un peu marre de ne montrer que des films tournés dans des musées, dit-elle. Marre aussi de la critique institutionnelle et du conceptuel. »

Lili Reynaud-Dewar a profité de son passage à Montréal pour créer une nouvelle vidéo dans les locaux désertés du MAC. Un film de 32 min, I Want All of the Above to Be the Sun (MAC Montreal), petit frère d’une œuvre du même titre [en français : Je veux que tout ce qui précède soit le soleil]shot at the Tabakalera cultural center in Donostia/San Sebastián, in the Basque Country.

I Want All of the Above to Be the Sun (Tabakalera)

Lili Reynaud-Dewar also exhibits sculptures that echo her videos, in a desire to archive her creations and create cycles that are like personal diaries. It presents five aluminum sculptures that describe a citizen sitting on the ground, cellphone in hand. They stem from a sculpture she made for the city of Montpellier, France. The citizen, it is she, who posed “for hours” in the workshop of a foundry in Bulgaria run by a woman. “A collective work carried out in 2019, 2020 and 2022, she says. I loved the experience, even if it’s long! And I will continue to create his sculptures…”

Lili Reynaud-Dewar, at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, until September 17