The Gazette (Montreal)
March 9, 2013 Saturday
Final Edition
An underground path to artistic enlightenment; Barcelona group
explains itself at Art souterrain
by JOHN POHL, The Gazette
Art souterrain covers seven kilometres through the labyrinth that is
Montreal’s underground city, but at Complexe Desjardins it surfaces
into the sunlight, to where nine artists from the invited city of
Barcelona have set up booths around the central fountain to show their
videos.
While the artists left Montreal on Tuesday – “we have jobs,” one of
them said – there are volunteer mediators at Complexe Desjardins and
throughout the circuit who can help visitors understand the artists’
intentions. There are a lot of mediators – to assist with
installations by 120 artists set up throughout the network of métro
stations, passageways and 14 buildings.
Art souterrain began last Saturday and runs until March 17, between
McGill and Place des Arts métro stations and along a horseshoe-shaped
route that passes the Place d’Armes, Square Victoria and Bonaventure
stations.
The event, and its many mediators, fits founder and director Frédéric
Loury’s goal of expanding public knowledge of contemporary art.
Sophie Guignard is a mediator. She explained how Kaia Hugin, a
Norwegian in the Barcelona contingent, used archival photos and her
own narration to create a fake documentary, Hannava, in which she
traces her love of nature to a Sami (aboriginal) grandmother she
doesn’t have. Hugin’s comic struggle in the video to erect a tent is a
clue that something is amiss.
“You can use old photos to say whatever you want,” Guignard observed.
She also noted that Hugin poses the question: “Is it necessary to have
a Sami ancestor to get closer to nature?”
Pieter Geenen and others were at the Barcelona exhibition on Monday to
talk about their work. Geenen’s video Relocation shows Mount Ararat
emerging from night’s darkness into the morning sun. Mount Ararat is a
symbol of Armenia, but Armenians can only see it from afar because the
mountain is across the border in Turkey, and the nations remain
divided over responsibility for the Armenian genocide of 1915.
Geenen has reversed the image of Mount Ararat to evoke the side of the
mountain that Armenians can’t see, and inserts subtitles whose text is
based on comments made by Turks and Armenians. But the nationalities
of the people quoted aren’t identified, and comments like “they were
good people” are ambiguous as to who is speaking of whom.
“I’m not a journalist or a documentary filmmaker,” Geenen said. “I
don’t take sides.”
Ryan Rivadeneyra’s Livin’ la Vida Loca is a series of short stories
about destruction and creation. The Luddites, who fought
industrialization in the 1800s by breaking machinery, are included. So
is the Unabomber, the murderous neo-Luddite, and last year’s hurricane
Sandy, which caused extensive damage in New York and New Jersey.
People in the art community think New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood
suffered the most because of the art that was destroyed, Rivadeneyra
said. “But what is art destruction compared to the suffering of
people?”
Marla Jacarilla made Cartographies by pointing her camera at a terrace
while she walks around it. An accompanying narration about world
geography is distracting, but causes the cracks and scuff marks in the
walkway to take on greater significance.
The piece is about imagination, Jacarilla said. “What people can see
even when there is nothing.”
Pedro Torres made his video Bifurcation in the halls of a building
that houses artists’ studios.
“The corridors were always empty,” he said, “but I knew there were
people behind the doors because I could see them in the windows
outside.”
The video moves through endless corridors, bathed in yellow light to
make the space fictional, while voices read excerpts from Jorge Luis
Borges’s The Garden of Forking Paths. The feeling is claustrophobic
and frantic.
The Barcelona exhibition is just one small section of the Art
souterrain labyrinth. Also, there are special activities on many days,
including performances, guided tours and workshops.
Art souterrain continues until March 17. For more information, visit
artsouterrain.com.
Raphaëlle de Groot, winner of last year’s Sobey Art Award for a
Canadian artist under 40, will represent Quebec at this year’s Venice
Biennale, which opens June 1.
The Montreal artist will begin a performance in the Giardini, the park
where Canada and other countries have national pavilions, and will
continue along the city’s canals in a gondola.
De Groot said in an interview that her performance will involve the
kind of transformations she has been doing since 2006, in which she
covers her head and body and becomes a living sculpture. Blinded, she
becomes vulnerable.
Risk is involved, but risk is inherent in creation, she said. “Any
work to move forward needs to confront the unknown.”
In one performance, de Groot stood on an unstable bucket.
“There was no danger, but people were tense, thinking I might fall,” she said.
The Venice performance will last two to three hours. She will practise
getting into a gondola blindfolded, but there won’t be a rehearsal.
“I don’t know yet how much can be planned,” she said. “How will I get
to the gondola? Will people help me?”
Louise Déry, director of Galerie de l’UQÀM and curator for the
venture, has long envisioned de Groot performing in Venice, the city
of masks, masquerade and disguise.
Déry describes his vision: “I could see her balanced precariously on a
gondola, head and body transformed, blinded, masked and encumbered
with prostheses and sundry found objects, roaming the canals, a
striking effigy leaving in her wake a revisited idea of the figure of
the artist.”
For more information, visit galerie.uqam.ca.