Please Speak To The Material - Festival Art Matters
Commissarié par Renée Mathews
28 février au 9 mars 2024
Galerie Pierre-François Ouellette
Site Web de l’exposition
Essai sur l’oeuvre
Texte d’exposition
My main emergency will be erasure, more specifically erasure of the gay and queer culture and communities.
I am obsessed with this idea of sending an artwork in the future as an ambassador or a testimony of what is happening in our time. Artwork can be uses a vessel to transmit message through times and generations. A bit like a fossil which are study to understand the evolution of life on Earth, artworks that cross time becomes a transmitter of information for the future generations.
I will love to preserve a site important for gay and queer culture which is a cruising ground located close to where I live, near a bike trail and separated by a railway where there are hundreds of men cruising there each day. Cruising for sex is moving around a specific public site in search of a sexual partner, usually anonymous, casual and one-night stand. Taking place in site well-known by people having the same sexual practice, cruising takes place in parks, public toilets, gyms, gay bathhouses or gay bars.
In the attempt to preserve this site, I collected rocks, plants, and artefacts from this cruising ground. Using liquid emulsion, I printed on rocks founded on this specific cruising spot different images of gay and queer people. I presented the rocks/images surrounded with plants and artefacts collected on the cruising spot in the aim to copy and recreate this site. I wish this installation, put in the context of the artworld, will help record and transmit this site and the knowledge and practices attach to it. I wish this installation to be an image encapsulating this specific site important for the gay and queer communities.
My installation will be located on the floor and can be various size depending on the space in which it will be shown. Using Ikebana technic, I am able to install my work really fast, but I always enjoy spending time with the artefact to set up a balanced installation.