Exhibition August 31 to October 15, 2023
Opening August 31 – 5 to 7
After many years spent straddling the divide between literature and the visual arts, Gabrielle Demers refuses to choose, or rather, chooses to give her two loves the place they deserve. After a burn-out that deprived her of words, Gabrielle returned to artistic creation to find the possibility of a new language. Inhabited then and still today by the presence and experiences of her daughters, who are still children, she is now pursuing a Master’s degree in Contemporary Artistic Practices at UQAT, using her art to explore the multiple questions and paradoxes surrounding female identities and their (lack of) right to speak in a patriarchal society.
In Performances ordinaires, Gabrielle explores the duality that comes with being in the world as a woman. Absent presence, listened to without being heard, looked at without being seen: how to reconcile an identity with its contradictions? In a world where women rarely, if ever, present themselves to the gaze of others without minimal transformation, without thinking, if only moderately, about their appearance, Gabrielle explores the nuances and limits between staging oneself as a takeover of power or as a submission to it. In a twenty-five-minute video in which three make-up routines are strung together and superimposed, the artist tackles the themes of seriality and ritual in a troublingly intimate posture. Without sound or acceleration, she invites the audience to observe the construction of her own image, using the codes of technology and social networks. From the vulnerability of the self-narrative emerges a position of control in which Gabrielle fully occupies the space that belongs to her, in a posture that, without being denunciatory, is resolutely committed and absolutely true.
Text by Gabrielle Izaguirré Falardeau
L’Écart opening hours
Wednesday to Friday: 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
