Group Exhibition - Shovelling Workshop
Livart
Artists
Clara Cousineau, Remy Fortin, Ahreum Lee, Mariane Stratis, Florence Viau
In reference to archeology and in anticipation for the winter, this exhibition proposes itself as a shovelling workshop. Treating the exhibition as a workshop is an attempt to position the artworks presented as the unearthed treasures one’s shovel may poke in the repetitive act of shovelling and digging; a gesture that is representative of the labour that is engaged in the artists’ practices. At the inner core of a workshop stands the gesture of sharing knowledge and it is within this consideration that the works become canons of knowledge in telling us about our contemporary civilization.
Mariane Stratis’s pieces, a starting point for this exhibition, explore the excavation works that were undergone in Dorchester Square as it was being redesigned. Clara Cousineau and Florence Viau both engage in a conversation around the historial object as a protagonist whose body is rendered using technology. While Remy Fortin’s paintings offer a critique on the human ecological imprint, Ahreum Lee expands on this critique as she uses the “rock” to hopscotch around contested borders.
By turning the space into an archeological digging site, shovelling workshop invites us to collectively sit through the metaphorical representation of the historiographic turn as we intently scratch the surface, and to think about the depth that it generates and what it reveals as a critical truth about the present.
Text by Joyce Joumaa
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Photo Credit: Katya Konioukhova