My Woodland
Manif d’art 7 (curated by Vicky Chainey Gagnon), La chambre blanche, Quebec, Canada, 2014
My Woodland gathers a 12 meter inkjet print showing images taken from three study sites; a model landscape from which an image is projected onto a glass panel via a lighting system and old camera lens; a series of documents – geographical maps, press clippings, various elements from archival holdings; an audio recording of a conversation between the artist and a city Councillor of Saint-Bruno, Marilou Alarie; furniture; and finally, a video projection of a canopy showing the phenomenon of crown shyness (which is inscribed in the space left vacant in between individual trees from a same specie). A piliated woodpecker-shaped sculpture made by biologist Michel Delorme is also part of the display.
My Woodland examines the forces at play when an urban woodland is threatened by developers. Three sites have been examined for this occasion: the heritage site of Mount Royal and its old philosophy seminar of the Saint-Sulpice priests; the boisé des hirondelles in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville; the boisé Woodfield and the Saint Patrick and Mount Hermon cemeteries, located in the historical borrow of Sillery in Québec City.
Review
Vicky Chainey Gagnon (Curator). (2014). Résistance. And Then We Created New Forms [exhibition catalogue]. Québec, Manif d’art.
Text in French by Isabelle Porter published in Journal Le Devoir, May 26, 2014.