If the night brings advice and sleep is restorative, why not take inspiration from it? With its metaphors and a welcome critical spirit, the Quebec biennial, or Manif d’art, invites us to draw on “the forces of sleep”. The survival of the planet depends on our moments of passivity, slowness and introspection, proclaim the forty artists of the eleventh edition.
The vast international event – a central exhibition and fifteen others in as many places, as well as a dozen public art projects – is not alarmist, but calming, benevolent, conducive to dreams. While a duo (Joachim Koester and Stefan A. Pedersen) suggests closing our eyes, Pavitra Wickramasinghe dazzles with an installation worthy of a children’s mobile.
If the motif of the bed and the figure of the sleeper dominate, there is no question of opposing wakefulness and sleep, as Parisian curator Marie Muracciole emphasized during the inauguration of the event. Distraction, meditation or hypnotic effects are among the half-sleep states highlighted.
“We are asked to concentrate, to be present. Presence is associated with productivity, she said in an interview. What interests me are moments of weakness which in reality require us to rebuild ourselves, to regain our senses, to change position. Sleep doesn’t have to mean flopping down on a bed. »
In the center of Le Lieu, in Saint-Roch, the potentially emblematic work of this Manif 11 takes place. Make my bed, both installation and performance, Marie-Claude Gendron has designed an oversized piece of furniture, as if taken from a dream. For a month, eight hours a day, five days a week, she will not stop carefully placing her sheets, removing them, replacing them. Like the feminist pioneers, Marie-Claude Gendron gives domestic tasks their artistic value. At her house, however, the bed is not all cozy. Wait until she takes off all the sheets, you’ll see.
Hypnotic repetition opens a mental space, breaking with the diktat of efficiency. The renowned Francis Alÿs made it one of his signatures. At Espace Quatre Cents (central exhibition site), Song for Lupita (Mañana)a 1998 set consisting of a cartoon, sketches and a 45 rpm record that plays non-stop, seems to be a manifesto for “wasting your time” intelligently.
At the heart of the Demonstration
The curator energized this building at the port of Quebec with around thirty works. François Morelli opens the tour with a new version of a 1994 installation on the right to sleep. On the first floor, the functions of time are re-evaluated. In addition to the animation of Alÿs, emerge the nocturnal shamans drawn by Tuumasi Kudluk, the uncomfortable sleeping bags sculpted by Liz Magor or the dysfunctional clocks on lenticular prints of the RAQS collective.
Visibility is at the heart of the intermediate floor. If Emily Wardill’s sound and light proposal is disorienting – the room seems empty – that of Xavier Le Roy is a great success. We must advance in the dark, open our imagination and try to understand the movements of two performers and a model (Saturdays and Sundays only). Further on, a video by Abbas Akhavan, both silent and ventriloquist, plays on the readability of a flower in the shape of a face. The artist is one of those who also benefits from a presence in public space. His proposal on the roof of a building, radical and sensible, consists of a word, “without birds”, painted in water. The work, which is only addressed to… birds, speaks of disappearance and challenges our certainties.
The top floor of Espace Quatre Cents brings together a coherent whole around nature and the territory, examples of a life in latency. The sleep of a dog who ignores noisy Mexico (video by Alÿs) responds to the living moss of Elodie Pong. By Eveline Boulva, fragile icebergs — photosensitive drawings, prone to fading — rub shoulders Seed, a table with ceramic rice grains by star Kapwani Kiwanga. The watercolors of Joseph Tisiga offer a journey between fiction and nods to the history of painting which leads to the labyrinthine installation of boards painted in acrylic by Sarah F. Maloney. From the artist from Sept-Îles, Evergreen (forest green) merges animal hunting and pictorial traditions (perspective, monochromy), two universes linked by patience, passive observation and the potential absence of results.
Utopias and challenges
The occupation of the territory and the question of housing, an unavoidable source of conflict, manifest themselves elsewhere. Between the anticolonial reflections of Dawit L. Petros (Morrin Center) and the inclusive concerns of Barbara Manzetti (Maison de laliterature), the forces of sleep are more or less obvious. In Lévis, at the Regart center, Laure Tixier is exhibiting a multicolored set of felt houses, a sort of utopian panorama of architectural diversity. THE Plaid Houses (2007-2011) are inspired by the game in which we recharge our batteries by putting our heads under a sheet, sheltered from reality.
A rare winter biennial, the Manif found its own theme in sleep. It is in the cold season that animals, plants and other beings interrupt their active lives. Does incessant warming threaten these cycles? With an external work, Yann Pocreau will perhaps have the answer. He projects vernacular photos deliberately difficult to distinguish onto an ice wall. The micro-narratives to be invented will evolve as the frozen bricks melt. However, thawing too quickly could distort the experience by hastening the return of images in a space already well occupied by the screens, the very ones which prevent us from stopping.
Often uneven in the past, the Manif d’art has little down time, paradoxically, in this 11e sleepy edition. We must salute his perseverance in supporting the next generation, among other things through the Young Commissioners component. Which does not prevent the inclusion of historical works, including the iconic video Halcion Sleep (1994) by the late Rodney Graham (La Bande Vidéo and Joliette Art Museum). The artist is filmed asleep in the back seat of a car. Through the windows, which have become screens, the nocturnal landscape parades, a dream world, like that of cinema, that of art, the last field capable of transforming us, according to Marie Muracciole.
Our collaborator stayed in Quebec at the invitation of the Manif d’art.