Anne-Marie Bouchard Manon Sioui Yahndawa’: Vertige et les Sept feux

Rooted in a resolutely dialogic approach, Yahndawa’: Vertige et Les sept feux is a video installation by Anne-Marie Bouchard and Manon Sioui, in collaboration with France Gros-Louis Morin. With its two distinct yet complementary parts, the work evokes a landscape and a river that mirror each other while simultaneously standing apart, creating a play of representations and parallel horizons. 

Suggested through projections of plants and natural materials, notably via the use of phytograms, the landscape embraces and extends into its river, represented by a stream of finely beaded fabric. The beadwork features motifs drawn from the wampum of the Prophecy of the Seven Fires, a story of strength and hope deeply anchored in Anishinaabe culture. Carrying this rich symbolic and spiritual reference, the river serves as a place of meeting and sharing for the delicately staged corn husk figures as well as for the audience walking by its shore. 

Alongside the videos that make up the installation and heighten its natural resonance, a soundscape is intricately woven into the whole. The deliberate presence of this soundtrack—featuring recordings of the Akiawenhrahk River, which flows through both Wendake and the city of Québec—reinforces the immersive and even introspective quality of this multifaceted work.

The artists would like to thank the artist-run centers VU - Centre de diffusion et de production de la photographie and La Bande Vidéo, centre de création et de diffusion en arts médiatiques.