CounterPoses : re-concevoir le tableau vivant
OBORO
Organized in collaboration with Display Cult
Performances: May 7, 8 and 9, 1998
See the publication
CounterPoses is an exhibition-event where ten artists from Québec, Canada and the United States re-imagine the genre of tableaux vivants and incorporate living persons in elaborate, site-specific installations.
Traditionally, tableaux vivants posed individuals in live recreations of paintings, sculptures, or scene from literature and history, often with moral and religious overtones. They form one aspect of a general phenomenon called "living display", a term which covers diverse practices such as Renaissance, ceremonial pageants, carnival sideshows, colonialist showcasing of ethnographic others, and more recently, supermodels, bodybuilders, living museums and performance art.
The artists in CounterPoses draw upon the history and problematics of living display, yet dramatically reconceive that legacy in terms of contemporary issues and ideas. The body in these works is much more than a raw material, it is the site where complex cultural discourses of identity, gender and affiliation are negotiated and reconceived.
CounterPoses is an experimental exhibition prototype exploring the politics of the viewer-viewed relationship and shifting aesthetic experience from consumption to encounter.
This festive event takes place in the gallery space as well as in locations throughout the 4001 Berri building. The performance installations are peopled for three days and several of the installations remain during the following week.
OBORO
Jim Drobnick is a writer and curator living in Montréal. He is assistant editor at Parachute and teaches at Concordia University. His writings have focused on the body in performance, dance and sculpture and his current research concerns the use of olfaction in artistic practice. Jennifer Fisher is a writer and curator living in Montréal. She is Contemporary Arts Fellow at the National Gallery of Canada and holds a postdoctoral affiliation with Cornell University. She has written on museums, exhibition practices and display culture and is currently working on a book exploring the role of the haptic sense in aesthetic experience. Drobnick and Fisher form the core of Display Cult, a collaborative framework for interdisciplinary practices in the visual arts.