Event Art Souterrain Festival 2019

The theme of Art Souterrain’s 2019 edition, Le vrai du faux or True or False, touches me deeply because it leads me, as a curator, to address a major concern of today’s social reality: its relationships to representation and to authenticity.

As a woman, mother and artist, I am in perpetual search of sincerity in my relationships and in my work; that’s why I wanted to deal with this theme from a humanist angle.

My selection of photographic works aims both to echo and to question the reality of the Web and social networks that over the past ten years have continually presented us with counterfeit, orchestrated and artificial images of daily, intimate and family life, the body, beauty, success and happiness. Most of the time these images are idealized moments, and they are often constructed from scratch.

This trend of putting ourselves on show daily incites us to constantly compare ourselves to models or to information that doesn’t represent reality, but instead just one facet of it, in most cases the one where everything is almost perfect…

We must, of course, take into account the idea that any view implies a given point of view and therefore is never objective. My photographic selection is a conversation between the way in which we represent ourselves and how artists in various ways document, interpret, create from scratch or comment on these staged scenes of daily life, a stereotypical body, our life choices, our dependence on images and our need to continuously expose our intimacy.

Access to information has never been easier.Sources and tools have multiplied since the last decade. However, the density of editorial content is rarified as time goes on and the presence of journalism has become limited in it’s expressive capabilities. citizens are becoming actors and occupying more place in unconventional medias. Specialized information chains prioritize audience ratings over fastidious reports and researches. The appealing content and summaries of those new platforms are pushing us to question the veracity of their sources. It has become complex to distinguish the true from the false.

Three invited commissaries, Maude Arsenault, Martin Le Chevalier, Joyce Yahouda are bringing to light the workings of disinformation, the facets of imposture, the complex existence of beliefs inside our hyper-mediated society.

Bombarded with much contradictory and manipulative information, we’re living in the era of the famous Fake News that comes with mediatization, political globalization and the many new media.

Through their humorous and enjoyable works, the artists explore, probe and denounce the many clichés, absurdities and social violences found within our reality: Perry Bard (deceit), Edward Hillel (power), Céline B. La Terreur (myth), Vincent Lafrance (mass culture), and Alexander Pilis (illusion).

I appeal to visitors to participate, in their individuality, by inviting them to an active experience: to physically enter and touch the pieces in the interactive works presented by Edward Hillel and Alexander Pilis.

By presenting videos, installations and performances, my hope is to encourage people to take time to stop, reflect and play.

The question of forgery fascinates me both as an artist and a curator. Any illusion is a representation and any illusionist is a painter…

I am delighted to take part in Festival Art Souterrain, because bringing works into public spaces is one of the best ways for us to question the world that surrounds us. Moving from fiction into reality leads us, for example, to ask ourselves what is the likelihood of this reality. These green plants arranged in the corridors, these ads that await our passage, this underground city… What artificial world do they bring us?

I have brought together works that open our eyes as they mystify us. A Métro map flipped north-south seems unreal, yet remains perfectly exact. An artist having an image of his avatar as a photo on his ID card is thus officially represented by his digital double. Objects belonging to our daily decor are duplicated by a facetious artist, who reveals their poetry and strangeness through this exercise of twinning. So many works spread along an enjoyable path. Some are immediately obvious, while others must be discovered like eggs in a garden on Easter day; still others falsify reality, at once visible and untraceable, like Edgar Allan Poe’s hidden letter.

I wanted an exhibition that aims as much at amateurs of art as the curious passersby, at users who we suddenly distract through gentle disturbances, thus inviting them to encounter the works and – let us hope – to enjoy their unexpected forms.