In the Flesh / En chair et en os
At : Produit Rien
6909 rue Marconi, Montréal, H2S 3K2
Vernissage: November 29th, 2023-12 to 5pm
Closing with performance: December 3rd, 2023
Performance: 3pm

About three years, almost 4 years now I started working with Big-Bang, a dance academy in Montreal. I have designed a series of workshops around ideas of performance. The base of the ‘activities’ has been moving with materials and objects that I bring to the participants.

Eventually, it did not take long to think of using my sculpture in the same way. This is part of this research. Léonie Belanger and my daughter Laura Borello-Bellemare joined me in this work, and they brought their on wonderful experience in contemporary dance to the task.

In The Flesh presents six sculptures that find their way into six photographs. The photographs capture women’s bodies wearing, carrying, inhabiting, manipulating the sculptural works. The vulnerability of these bodies, exposed but strong in their framing, proposes an inquisitive narrative exploring the question: what should be done with these objects?

The sculptural pieces in themselves have been an exploration of how to inject symbolic meaning into mass-produced articles, specifically products and materials found in the ubiquitous dollar store, but also in the hardware store, and the notion’s store.
I have transformed the banal domestic objects into sculptural art-works connected to ideas and feelings related to my body and my bodily experiences.

This manipulation and handling of the sculptures by the bodies, tell a story of a deeper connection, which is performative in nature and revelatory of youth and aging; furthermore, it talks of bodies as a source of pleasure and pain, disguise and confrontation. At the end, I see us in the flesh, me and them, able to pose but unable to move, vulnerable but aware of a strength that keeps us looking at ourselves.
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En chair et en os

En chair et en os comprend six sculptures qui se retrouvent en six photos. Ces images illustrent des corps féminins qui portent et transportent les pièces sculptées, les habitent et les manipulent. La vulnérabilité de ces corps, à la fois exposés et fortement encadrés, proposent un narratif interrogatif, presqu’inquisiteur : quelle est donc la destinée de ces objets ?

Ces sculptures sont elles-mêmes une tentative d’infuser une signification symbolique à des articles de fabrication industrielle qu’on trouve par exemple aux magasins à un dollar, en quincaillerie ou en mercerie. J’ai transformé ces articles de la banalité domestique en sculptures liées à des idées ou émotions issues de mon propre corps, ou de ses fonctions corporelles.

Le traitement que subissent ces sculptures traduit un lien plus profond, de nature performative et révélatrice de la jeunesse et de la vieillesse. De plus, elles interprètent les corps comme sources de plaisir et de douleur, de déguisement et de confrontation. En somme, je nous vois en en chair et en os, eux et moi, capables de prendre la pose mais incapables d’en sortir; à la fois vulnérables mais conscients de la puissance permettant cette auto contemplation.