Cathy Sisler : La Femme Écran/The Reflexive Woman
OBORO
Opening and publication launch on Saturday, April 13 at 4 pm
Recently, I’ve been working with a quiet woman for whom I’ve been trying to write a script. I’m sorry to have to report, however, that I’ve completely lost track of who is saying what. For example, who came up with the line: “It’s funny how even a quiet person can bleed into a room, even while it’s bleeding into her?” I can’t remember, so I’ve resorted to placing blanks instead of names before the voices. I must also report that Twala (the quiet woman) and I are very nervous about making a sound-environment for this OBORO show. It’s like inviting people to a party without knowing which voices will bleed in and out of which heds. Furthermore, I’ve never invited all the women in my work to be in the same room at the same time with other people. It’s hard enough to get Twala over to my apartment where the walls are paper-thin. I’m still not sure if she will continue to work with me on this project. She disappears for days at a time, causing me to feel very alone. But I’ll try my best. I give you my word. Yours truly, C.S.
A woman wonders about her presence to others as well as to herself. The characters sketched from one work to the other are fascinating because of their disconcerting complexity and their troubling familiarity, oscillating between an obstinate silence and an extreme volubility. Same and other, in constant redefinition these characters generate a climate disturbed by the mobility of identity. Between the videotapes, the objects and the drawings scattered in the gallery’s space and a sound environment, an art practice commands our attention through its singularity. N.G.
“Born: Neenah, Wisconsin, the dairy-state with the steel and papermills. Went to highschool in St. Catharines, Ontario, the fruit-belt with the GM plant and the paper-mills. Worked and played music in Toronto, the clean and good city with the law-firms, mental hospitals and detoxes. Studied painting at OCA. Did my MFA in Open Media at Concordia. Now living in Montréal, where I continue to make videos, music and art, and where I continue to have strange encounters with unusual women.” Spinning is Cathy Sisler’s favorite endeavour.
Accompanied by a bilingual publication, this project is funded by the Canada Council’s Exhibition Assistance Program and by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec’s Promotion et diffusion des arts visuels au Québec et à l’étranger.
OBORO
Nicole Gingras est née à Québec; elle vit à Montréal depuis 1982, partagée entre un travail de conservation et l’écriture. C’est dans ce cadre que se développent divers projets d’expositions et des programmations de films et vidéos liés au corps, à l’autobiographie et à la mémoire : Les Absences de la photographie, 1994; Diverting the Image, 1993; Le Cinéma invisible, 1991; Le Mois de la photo à Montréal, 1991 et 1989. Un intérêt pour les pratiques expérimentales en cinéma et en vidéo et une curiosité pour l’image prise entre arrêt et mouvement ont guidé la rédaction de divers textes et la réalisation de Les Images des autres en 1993, un film sur quatre photographes. Et depuis, l’écriture occupe une place de plus en plus grande. Nicole Gingras aime la marche, tout simplement.