Örebro, Suède
EXMURO and OPENART have concluded an artistic exchange partnership in 2021. It started last summer, during the 8th edition of PASSAGES INSOLITES, with the co-production and presentation of artworks by three Swedish artists and collectives in Quebec City. In June 2022, it was the turn of our three Quebec artists and collectives, the duo Demers-Mesnard, Giorgia Volpe and Diane Landry, to travel and showcase our talent, dynamism and creativity at the largest public art biennial in Scandinavia.
This second part of the exchange gave rise to the production of new works on Swedish territory, but also to the circulation of works created in Quebec City, some of which were part of PASSAGES INSOLITES.
- Giorgia Volpe
Multidisciplinary artist Giorgia Volpe was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and has lived and worked in Quebec City since 1998. Her practice is nourished by domestic objects and gestures rooted in the everyday. The artist is interested in the relationship between the body and the environment as well as in the transitory states between the inside and the outside; the individual and the collective; the intimate and the public; the real and the imaginary. Throughout her career, she has participated in exhibitions, made public interventions and taken part in artist residencies in Brazil, Cuba, Canada, Europe, the United States and Thailand.
Passage migratoire, created for 2016 PASSAGES INSOLITES.
The work evokes the past and the present through the idea of migration and its influence on the formation of our society and the metamorphosis of our territory. The installation also suggests the vulnerability and resistance of the species, human and animal, that live this migratory or transhumance reality. The braided canoes, as if in a state of levitation, approach the shoreline, drawing a strange movement in space, like a procession. The work pays homage to Quebec folklore, to the belief of sailors and to the heritage of the know-how of the First Nations, in a place of exchange where all these communities once lived together.
Mirage, 2022
Suitcases, created for 2021 PASSAGES INSOLITES.
Left abandoned in the city, Giorgia Volpe’s suitcases seem to have been dropped off in passing and then forgotten, misplaced or voluntarily given up by their bearer. Some of them punctuate the route by appearing as if by chance near a park bench, a street corner or a telephone booth, while others seem to have been interrupted in the middle of a journey, near the train station or the cruise ship platform.
The suspicious luggage, however, does not contain any personal belongings to be seized or treasures to be discovered: it is entirely composed of solid concrete that rules out any use. The formal contradiction between the immovable heavy material and the vagrant lightness of the object it reproduces creates a rupture with multiple evocations. Resolutely anchored to the ground, the obsolete suitcases refer to the recent stagnation of travel, nomadism and human migrations so often evoked in Volpe’s work.
- Diane Landry
Born in Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Diane Landry lives and works in Quebec City. She holds a BFA from Laval University in Quebec City and an MFA from Stanford University in California. In her artistic practice, she tries to give a whole new meaning to the things that surround her, especially to the banal objects of everyday life. The concept of recycling, both literally and figuratively, is paramount to her. She has completed residencies, created performances and participated in exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Latin America, Europe, China and Australia. The Musée d’art de Joliette dedicated a retrospective to her in 2009 and the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 2013. Landry is represented by Galerie Michel Guimont (Quebec City), Carl Solway Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio) and VivianeArt Gallery (Calgary).
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Épuisement, 2012-2022
Mandala Perrier et Mandala Naya, 2002
Boat creature, 2022
- Desmers-Mesnard
Isabelle Demers and Fanny Mesnard are two multidisciplinary artists whose practices come together through a fascination for the poetic and expressive character of the animal and plant components of the boreal forest. Their association in public art allows them to enhance their ecological concerns by aiming for generous projects with an animistic character that promote the place of nature in the public space. The duo has been working on occasional joint projects since 2014. At the same time, both artists also have an independent artistic production.
Les heureux naufragés, created for 2018 PASSAGES INSOLITES.
This fantastic oasis seems to have broken away from a distant land and drifted to us bringing with it its strange inhabitants. By day and by night, Les heureux naufragés stand on their island to invite us to the collective dream of a more harmonious and peaceful world.
