Dominique Sirois – Skawennati

Respective exhibitions by Dominique Sirois (Montreal) and Skawennati (Montreal)

April 18 — May 19, 2018

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Wednesday, April 18 from 7PM to 11PM
Opening reception

► Catering by Chloé Berlanga
► Music by DJ Glory Hull

Free admission / Free parking / Cash bar

→ https://axeneo7.com/fr/dominique-sirois-2/
→ https://axeneo7.com/fr/skawennati-2/

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Dominique Sirois
Di$play_Body

Di$play_Body presents a continuation of the research of Montreal-based artist Dominique Sirois, who has focused on art and economics in her work since 2014. In resonance with the various iterations of Indice éternité (2016-2017) and Mimesis Trinity (2014-2017), the theme of finance is once again centralized through a combination of affects that conceptually and formally exacerbate the prevailing trends of greed for any miser obsessed with economy. Thus, through possible utopian cessations, economic retentions or mythical speculations, Sirois presents the financial dimension divided into two different allegorical figures. These two representations, or rather, these extensions of financial manifestations, propose opposing attitudes towards money: one that is between retention and donation, or deprivation and permission. Figures made of casts and assemblages, specific to Sirois’ iconography, are intriguing, and at the same time, frightening. The practical exploration of ceramics is therefore intertwined in a bidding of both theoretical and anecdotal tracks.

In the first figure, the traits of the previously mentioned miser are intensified through the features of a businesswoman, not far from those of the controversial Martha Stewart, who was accused of insider trading in 2004 and imprisoned that same year. Arranged on a tiled device, the biomorphic body of the latter is dismantled into a somatic and anatomical span. This inert composition presents organic tension; it seems immutable — half natural and half artificial — even transhumanistic.

In the second figure, the mythological figure of Danaë is summoned. According to the age-old Greek myth, Acrisius confines his daughter Danaë to a tower when an oracle predicts that his descendants would kill him. Interestingly, the tower to which Danaë is confined is nonetheless showered with gold sent from Zeus. Sirois appropriates this chimerical dispute in a representation of abundant salvation: a flood of coins. The bare body of Danaë is analogically linked to the nudes of art history, and, the Danaë figure painted in a series by Titian (between 1544 and 1560) is seen updated in the current perspectives of fashion and high fashion commercials, including those of Versace. The body thus becomes a human support — a device — for luxurious objects.

Transposed in an immersive and decorative installation space, the arrangements suggest a metonymic displacement. The paradigm of art for art, at times associated with decoration, is correlated to that of money for money, and as such should the exhibition be apprehended. In this installation, the visitor is invited to experience an assembled interior worthy of a decor magazine; one punctuated with symmetrically arranged pieces, ethereal elements and atypical furniture made with tiles. Armored textile pieces are contrasted with transparent ornamental fabric upon which is printed the traditional white shirt of the businessman, however dislocated — even jumbled — it might be.

Di$play_Body by Dominique Sirois introduces new formal and conceptual associations of greed, linking the fictional to the decorative in an allegory for money by bodies converted into devices.

— Jean-Michel Quirion

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Dominique Sirois lives and work in Montreal, she hold a degree from University of Quebec in Montreal in visual art (MFA 2010) and is pursuing a PhD. Her installation work takes the form of sets composed of individual pieces often in the logic of assemblages. They are often sculptural, associating ceramics, casts and found objects. These assemblages have also as a starting point images where Sirois seek to play with the materiality of prints in dialogue with different material supports. With her projects, Sirois creates mental spaces, like semiotic and analogical constructions using economic, aesthetic, archeologic and digital references. Her projects have been presented in numerous galleries in Canada, among them Clark centre, Division gallery and Latitude 53. Sirois also did several residencies abroad (C.C.A., Glasgow, Couvent des Récollets, Paris and Hangar, Barcelona). She frequently collaborates with artist Grégory Chatonsky, they presented their joint work at MOCA Taipei, at CDA of Enghien-les-Bains in France, at Mois de la Photo in Montreal, at Unicorn Center for Arts in Beijing and at l’IMAL in Brussels and more recently at Diagonale in Montreal.

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Skawennati.
Teiakwanahstahsontéhrha’ We Extend the Rafters

Children’s exhibition

My name is Iotetshèn:’en, and I live on Earth-usually. Our planet is united under the Great Law of Peace. […] Earth has been attacked by more than one visitor from outerspace, and our harmonious way of life is being threatened. So for now, my home is this spaceship. We are travelling to the first meeting of the five nearest, friendliest planets in our galaxy. The goal of our mission is to create a union that will protect us from attacks and also help us share our very different knowledges. I have been invited on this historic voyage because I have a special power…

Thus begins The Peacemaker Returns, a futuristic saga set in 3025 yet firmly rooted in the ancestral Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederation story and featuring historical figures such as Tekanawí:ta, Jacques Cartier, and a president addicted to Twitter! This new machinima — an animation — style movie produced on the virtual reality platform Second Life — is the core of the children’s exhibition Teiakwanahstahsontéhrha’ | We Extend the Rafters, designed specifically for kids aged 5 to 11 by Skawennati. Audiences of all ages are invited to (re)discover some traditions in the artist’s “museum of the future,” an original installation. A guided tour and a collective workshop in the form of an innovative board game will encourage young and mature viewers alike to (re)learn history from an Indigenous perspective and imagine how all people can contribute to the world of tomorrow, reminding us how History, like any other narrative, is a construction defined by those who tell it.

An exhibition produced and circulated by VOX — Centre de l’image contemporaine

→ http://centrevox.ca/

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Skawennati makes art that addresses history, the future, and change from an Indigenous perspective. Best known for her machinimas — movies made in virtual environments — she also produces still images, sculpture and textile works.

Her pioneering new media projects include the online gallery/chat-space and mixed-reality event, CyberPowWow (1997-2004); a paper doll/time-travel journal, Imagining Indians in the 25th Century (2001); and TimeTraveller™ (2008-2013), a multi-platform project featuring nine machinima episodes. These have been presented in New Zealand, Hawaii, Ireland and across North America in major exhibitions such as “Now? Now!” at the Biennale of the Americas, and “Looking Forward (L’Avenir)” at the Montreal Biennale. Skawennati is represented by ELLEPHANT and her award-winning work is included in both public and private collections.

Born in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, Skawennati holds a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, where she is based. She is Co-Director, with Jason E. Lewis, of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research network of artists, academics and technologists investigating, creating and critiquing Indigenous virtual environments. She also co-directs their Skins workshops in Aboriginal Storytelling and Digital Media. In 2015, AbTeC launched IIF, the Initiative for Indigenous Futures; Skawennati is its Partnership Coordinator.