Engin et Art: Se protéger des intempéries

To fit the mood of Fillion’s work, this reading should be taken as a missal, a book for mass, and enter these lines like in a liturgy or, simply, in the same way as one tells oneself a story or goes to an exhibition.

You have carried the one that carries everything,

Art in your womb has taken flesh,

Gateway to heaven, Queen of the universe,

O Aura, we salute you!

Art would come from the heavens, the domain of extraterrestrials the theories of ancient astronauts acclaimed. The aura, on the other hand, is what makes an object a work of art, and not a simple commodity, avoiding a simple economic logic of surplus value. Afterwards, the division of divine and profane, esoteric and exoteric, is replayed at every step you take in the exhibition: do you understand the reference to these architectures?

You may have noticed explosions: suspended confetti, a barrel shape, strange urns, tombs, flying saucers, debris and works. Fillion highlights the inversion of the world, an apocalypse, using confetti. Between apocalypse and confetti, as if to suggest the end of this liturgy, the end of a world. By this, the artist separates a space which, at the first glance, would be indivisible, that of the initiated and the profane, that of the divine and the mortal, that of the interior genius and the demon sitting on your shoulder. A shock, a rupture, a bomb, an explosion, destruction, and then the confetti make this separation. The scene becomes transformed and we see two things: one horizontal and the other vertical. The horizontal one pierces us, reaches us, affects us – aims at the viscera and squeezes at the throat. The other, vertical, avoids us, flees from us, abstracts us – aims at the brain and gives us vertigo. The thing, now doubled, is no longer only material, but has also become iconic, archetypal, auratic – the Hamburger Bahnhof gallery for example. At the same time, so close yet so far away, following this shower of confetti, the bursting may happen to you: to laugh or cry?

It is said that the Annunciation will take form like signs in the heavens, to be understood as an aesthetic experience. Annunciation as a metaphor for a profound change, like a tabula rasa. A sign in the sky, it can be a UFO, a fabulous ornithopter or an inferno originating from a museum. The idea of a wonderful and frightening elsewhere is often used to invite us to change and, at the same time, to address the “unaddressable,” which sounds like this in my head:

“The sacred is something that flies and levitates far away, unattainable. No, no, the sacred is something that rises vertically and creates this world like a host, by lightning, by spirit. No, the sacred is something that is in us, but that cowers at first sight, avoiding the face-to-face or the argument. Well, no, no, blinding, the sacred may not even be a thing, damn no, no, no, not even a thing!”

Finally, after the exhibition, it might be proposed to fixate on any institution and, as if by retinal impression, to relive what you have just looked at. Quite a party, eh?

Text by Stvn girard

Bio of the author

Stvn girard (born Steven Girard) is an artist-researcher, strategist, con artist and theorist. He has presented several art projects, most notably in Cameroon, Northern Ireland, France, the United States, Mexico, Argentina, India and Canada. He is a regular contributor to cultural periodicals such as Inter, art actuel and Vie des arts. He holds a master’s degree in visual and media arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal: the title of his thesis being Déprise de soi : opacité offensive en performance comme mise en cause de l’être et de sa visibilité. He is currently studying for his PhD in visual arts, law and social sciences at Université Laval. His areas of research are anonymity, invisibility, homage, obsessive fear and intellectual property.

Bio of the artist

Caroline Fillion is a multidisciplinary artist from Saguenay. Her conceptual practice is based on symbolic juxtapositions and metaphors that question, divert or transgress the traditions the art world. A tempered reflection, of absurd seriousness, on the methods of legitimizing art through its institutions and on the relationships of the work, the artist and the commentary that precedes them.

Fillion holds a Master’s degree in visual arts from the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, a graduate diploma in management of cultural organizations from HEC Montréal and a Bachelor’s degree in visual and media arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and has participated in several regional, national and international exhibitions.

Acknowledgements

I am very happy to present my exhibition Engin et Art : Se protéger des intempéries at the artist-run centre CIRCA art actuel, and I would like to thank them for this wonderful opportunity. I am grateful to author Stvn Girard for his writing, divinely transforming images into words, my partner/lover Sébastien Kirouac for his technical support and magical power that gives me strength, cameraman/friend Gabriel Fortin for his precious complicity, the center de production en art actuel TOUTTOUT for their daily support in my production. Thanks as well to the access to a marvellous individual workshop, to the team of centre SAGAMIE and especifically for their support within the framework of CO-LAB, to the organization BANDE SONIMAGE for their confidence in granting me creation support and to all the people far and wide who contributed to this exhibition project. Furthermore, I would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for a concept to completion grant and a research/creation grant, and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec/MRC Saguenay for the grant from the Territorial Partnership Agreement, which, thanks to their generous funding, allows me to attach the intelligible to the real.  Thank you