Spread across several sites in Trois-Rivières, the Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine (BNSC) is once again playing the role of unifier. From the Parc art gallery, its headquarters since the beginning, to the distant R3 gallery at the Université du Québec, the program of the 11e edition (twelve installations by twelve artists in six addresses) is based on a strong theme, hearsay.
Fabulations, suppositions, interpretations, the stories summoned convey otherness or, at least, statements outside of official and normative discourses. In a positive tone, the approach does not fit into the disinformation in vogue. It would even be its opposite, so much do the artists’ proposals rest on inclusive values.
The hearsay of the BNSC is that of listening, of orality, of openness, giving importance to forgotten, marginalized stories. Voice is thus given to belugas, to a fiddler or to exploited workers. Words spoken or written, sounds and music logically dot this biennial carried by expression in all directions.
“While hearsay can sometimes lead to imposture and deception, it also has the capacity to make us think, to transform stories and to authorize speculation,” writes Karine Bouchard. The reflections that these works provoke engage us in change […]lead to “spreading the rumor”.
In this always explosive biennial, if only by the “national” of its name – the Berliner Clemens von Wedemeyer and the New Yorker Shuyi Cao prove, by their presence, the opposite this year -, the wobbly play on words of the exhibition title (Yes, say!) will hardly come as a surprise. Another peculiarity colours the curatorial work, Karine Bouchard only signing the thematic summary as “member of the artistic orientation and selection committee”.
The notion of “sculpture” is more problematic. While it goes without saying that the term includes any work of a three-dimensional nature, and not only those modeled, carved, molded or created by assembly, the BNSC rightly broadcasts installations. However, in Trois-Rivières, this summer at least, the elastic is stretched in an exaggerated manner. Why not rename the biennial?
In pictures and words
There are a lot of images in this 11e BNSC. It’s not a problem, on the contrary. To spread rumors, what could be better, right? The installation Mixing the belugas by Maryse Goudreau is a fine example of story construction based on photographic documentation.
Since 2012, the Gaspé artist has been working on a project presented as “an archive dedicated to the beluga.” In Trois-Rivières, she has set up two rooms where images are displayed, accompanied in particular by statements about the sound environment in which the cetacean is immersed. The old-fashioned or handmade nature of the informative material contributes to classifying this knowledge as popular mythology rather than proven science.
The environmentalist message of the installation has a strong sculptural presence, between the platform that denounces “those who think that the sound of engines is a tickle” and the wooden boat equipped with two engines that make it go around in circles – in order to “mix the belugas, the people who drive it […] and those who observe the scene.”
In several cases in this sculpture biennial, the “documentary” material exhibited is only an alibi. The film Extraction Out of Frame by Sanaz Sohrabi debunks the story behind Iran’s oil exploitation, but the accompanying glass-enclosed books don’t make it a 3D work.
The spatial experience is more real in the video installations of Clemens von Wedemeyer and Rémi Belliveau. Of the former, Social Geometrydespite an overly present audio narration, invites us to dive into a universe of geometry and astronomy where affect, perception and science enrich and contradict each other.
From the second, The forgotten reel revisits the story—true, false, or both—of Acadian fiddler Eloi LeBlanc (1909-1978). Once again, as at the Montreal biennial Momenta in 2023, Rémi Belliveau has created one of the most powerful works of the event. The dim light of the room and the stage curtain willingly participate in the musical storytelling that unfolds on a screen, just like the exhibited object, a violin.
The other installation not to be missed is free of images. Performance, textile and drawing artist Estela López Solís occupies the attic of the Parc art gallery in a very audacious way. Work in situ, Our pain comes in several white canvases on which are sewn statements that are both poetic and dramatic.
The occult, almost ghostly aspect of the place, serves a purpose inspired by the abusive exploitation of labor in the service of the export of exotic products. The simplicity of the words as well as the absence of factual data make these stories universal. The suffering, often silenced, finally resonates, while keeping its victims anonymous.
If the dispersion of the works in five places is not a defect, the gathering under the same roof of some of them makes manifest the orality and the intimacy which tint them. In addition to the works of López Solís and Goudreau, there is, among others, the sound work of the duo Bonneau-Knight, to be experienced individually, or the room where to live a mourning by Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle.
But the pure and hard hearsay, this “it seems that”, is to be associated with Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf. His Curiosity is to be discovered in a street near the Parc art gallery. Anyone who does not find it is left with the impression that the retrospective work placed in a car is just a fabrication. Others can spread the rumor without embarrassment.