Le Devoir gives the floor to the director of the UQO gallery, this university gallery that does nothing like the others.
Closed due to the pandemic for twenty months, the UQO gallery is reopening its doors. What do you take away from the experiment and the “Seeking openness” laboratory set up?
We had a big year of learning, of meeting people. Everything was happening online. We set up a vast network of collaborators, worked with 89 people, including 74 artists and people with whom we had never dared to work. Suddenly everyone was available. [Côté subventions], I was surprised: “Seeking the Opening”, a closure project, was funded by all three levels of government. First time that we are also supported. To be closed. It is ironical. At the same time, we were more active than ever. But I’ve never been so bored of exhibitions. I missed thinking about them, producing them.
Does the 2021-2022 program resume what was canceled in 2020?
Each postponed exposure has been modified because of or in response to the pandemic. This is not at all the programming that we would have had last year. [L’artiste néerlandaise] Nicoline van Harskamp, for example, was to make an exhibition on the theme of languages. She will do two. In the context of issues related to French, it is relevant to present the series English, which describes the different English [en usage] and the primacy that English occupies in the world.
The UQO gallery reopens with the exhibition Crossings, by Commissioner Véronique Leblanc. Is it the result of “Seeking openness”?
It is the culmination. Finally, we find the opening. It is a big step. Véronique was in residence [depuis un an]. It was understood that she would play a role during the reopening. His proposal is not didactic. It is an extension of our laboratory on the exchange process. Véronique left the floor to the artists, took a step back and exposes us, as she writes, “to the sensitivity and materiality of the bodies that are experienced”. It is an exposure on the body, in reaction to the [distanciation], which includes videos, photos, an installation, as well as a text by Marie-Andrée Gill in memory of Joyce Echaquan.