By going to Quebec City last weekend to attend the opening of the 10and edition of Manif d’art, as demonstrations against the health “dictatorship” took place, we had the feeling that the world had fallen head over heels. To see reality in the face, we have often tried to flush out the political ideologies that are infiltrating everywhere, journalists, scientists and intellectuals called upon to play a role of counter-power.
Today, the desire for dessilliance continues, but, as in the 1920s and 1930s, it is often “re-semanticized” into disinformation and lame stories that we want to believe at all costs. We are ready to lie to ourselves, to paint the world in black and white if necessary in order to find simplistic solutions to complex problems and suitable scapegoats. Chance sometimes doing things well, this Manif d’art challenges this worrying situation when, in the streets of Quebec and Ottawa, the vociferations have just died down demanding that all masks be put down.
This year’s theme, Illusions are real, is indeed highly topical. The presentation text also makes a link with “magical realism” which, in literature, has had its defenders. Sometimes described as “confused”, this movement had a very relative impact in the field of visual arts. Even if this expression was used during an exhibition at the MoMA in 1943, it would have deserved additional explanations here in order to show how it embodies an intelligent tool of protest. But this will perhaps be better developed in the catalog which is to come…
In the central section of this event, presented at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ), the visitor will find many works relating simply to trompe-l’oeil, both in photo and in painting or digital image. . It’s a bit redundant and not intellectually innovative. Since the birds of Zeuxis, the history of art, and even of philosophy, has been haunted by these accounts of misleading images “more real than real”. We could even say that it is the Achilles heel of art. If art were reduced to this banal wonder at deceptive appearances, we could say that it would fail in its mission to create rich and complex works by impoverishing itself in somewhat simplistic playful effects, worthy of stereograms.
Fortunately, in this event at the MNBAQ, we will find pieces that are much more aesthetically and intellectually complex. Among these, it is absolutely necessary to see the video Whisper (2015) by Gabriel Lester, produced in collaboration with Teatr.doc from Moscow, a troupe which, in Russia, talks about taboo subjects such as homosexuality or political prisoners. Lester stages a performance in a museum, that of a group of musicians partly hidden behind a wall, which allows them to discuss despite everything between them.
Beyond the musical work enjoyed by a bourgeois public, there is a conversation around the living conditions of artists, their relationship to society, to power, to honours… These musicians explain that art is often betrayed by artists, by political or social opportunism, thus preserving their comfort and the system. A remarkable work. An observation that is not only valid for Russia, where art is still under the imprint of censorship. Contemporary art is often the deceptive instrument of a speculative economic system.
The video Wearing Gillian (2018), by artist Gillian Wearing, resembles Russian dolls showing how our identities are always about self-invention and not simply — which goes against the dominant discourse on this subject — of the acceptance of an inner psychological reality repressed by social values.
Later, the section that makes links with ecological issues will also seem very relevant. The visitor will note in particular monochrome blue (2003) by Michel De Broin, a work that takes on a remarkable scale here. We see a hot tub designed in a real waste container. The work shows us with intensity how our current comfort has been built on our ability to lie to ourselves about the frightening ecological footprint that we, Western citizens, will leave on the planet…
We are really not immune to our own lies, collective or individual.
Our reporter stayed in Quebec at the invitation of Manif d’Art — La biennale de Québec.