Under the impetus of looks on science, technology and art history, the summer of the Joliette Museum of Art (Maj) is all feminine. The two exhibitions on the poster for a few weeks and the new permanent exhibition are very diverse in nature – a retrospective, a collective event and a program with a single work. The red thread that crosses them, in addition to gathering only women, talks about transparency, revelation, of making the invisible visible.
The most transcendent exhibition is the smallest. Entitled Matter. In the depth of the flesh, the delicacy of invasive machinesshe includes only the video installation of the same title, work by Nelly-Ève Rajotte. The artist, known for his skillful work and sound work, offers a journey here, say, organic. About twenty minutes (18, to be exact), Matter… Was inspired by his personal experience of a robot assisted operation.
Without taking sides for the presence in the health care of robotics or artificial intelligence, Nelly-Ève Rajotte delivers a narrative than terrifying narrative work. A first part of the story takes place in the coldness of an operating room where the machines, their eyes, their tentacular arms are ultimately not very threatening. A second, in the bowels of a body, is the opposite: colors, textures, bubbles, curves, everything is shimmering, full of life.
The robot eye serves as a guide in an adventure that looks more like a tale than a medical imaging. The Pinocchio whale is not so far. This inner world, the artist, or the artificial intelligence platform to which she called, imagined lush her as only nature can give. With Matter…, We are somewhere in oceanic depths.
Long-standing landscaper, Nelly-Ève Rajotte stood out during the exhibition Torrent forests women (Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, 2024) with an installation inspired by a scan used in forestry to assess the health of trees. From one time to the other, the artist, honorary member of the center loss center, overthrows an a priori negative state (the environmental crisis, surgery) in an exciting, soothing situation.
Commissioner Ariane de Blois, and conservative of contemporary art to the maj, who describes the approach of Nelly-Ève Rajotte de speculative, sees in the delicacy of machines a “rupture with the objective representations of the male gaze, inherited from artistic tradition and scientific knowledge”. Indeed, the medical authority shines by its absence – no human head appears among the machines, except that, stealthy, of the patient. To avoid or flee an approach to insensitive care, robotics seems to be an option. The internal auscultation of the body (here that of a woman, but that could that of a man) then takes place in a total state of abandonment.
Alchemy and other looks
With fifteen works and preparatory drawings, the exhibition Contemporary alchemist Gives a good overview of the practice of Rosalie D. Gagné, fed for more than 25 years of technical and technological knowledge. The artist and teacher in the Cégep neighboring the Maj navigates as well in the blown glass and the clay as in electronics and robotics.
Inaugurated during the winter and exceptionally extended by a season for reasons of financial economy, the retrospective has gained cohabit with the project of Nelly-Ève Rajotte. The alchemist that Commissioner Patrice Giasson, the only man put forward during the Maj’s summer, stuck to the artist also evokes a kind of response to the rigidity of scientific knowledge.
The experiments of Rosalie D. Gagné bring up a sensual and irrational world, but no less alive. Medusa vibrate, suspended in the museum’s entrance hall. Murmurs come from the interior of vases. Monumental installations are invasive. Everything is done in sweetness and not in horror.
Upstairs, the exhibition Collective actions. Feminist looks on the collection is not just a simple renewal of the permanent rooms. In 30 works, the commissioners Julie Alary Lavallée and Renée Filbey offer an unusual history of art, and of the Maj collection, that is to say without the usual canons-men. There is no shortage of flagship artists from Lynne Cohen to Sorel Cohen, from Rita Letendre to Carolee Schneemann. This is proof that the proportion of women present in the museum’s reserves (12 %), something denounced by the exhibition, is an aberration – and a generalized problem. This invisibility is a global matter.
Binding each work at a historical moment was a good idea to recall that acquisitions respect a logic. They are not insane, say the commissioners. The exercise becomes tedious, however, as historical references compare badly. A tapestry by Mariette Rousseau-Vermette from 1961 is associated with “the rise of public art”, while an acrylic by Ghitta Caiserman of 1954 is classified under “art and socialism”.
However, the exhibition is worth the detour. The rapprochement between the works of the Duo Fleming & Lapointe, Karen Trask and Shannon Bool makes it possible, for example, to compare wills to transcend the techniques and the ways of representing a subject. The minisolo dedicated to Sylvie Bouchard, who closes the course, gives the opportunity to review the work Installation (1983), a significant set of the renewal of the pictorial language. Note thatActions collectives also exists online.