Finding solace and comfort in the unknown with Marion Paquette
Comment les silences trouvent-ils écho — how do silences find echo | by: Marion Paquette
Hyperbolic, dystopian, and relatable - that’s how we would describe the work of Montreal-based visual artist, Marion Paquette, in three words. But it’s way more than that. The way Marion personifies emotion and human interaction, it’s easy to understand how attuned she is to her sensibilities and just how vulnerable we are as humans to the things that surround us whether it be alive, inanimate or figurative. At moments when you feel so lost, Marion’s subtle visual cues help you realize you’ve already been found.
I think my work came to be more conceptual in order to conduct a better comprehension of myself.
What is your earliest memory of bringing an idea or vision to life? Have you always thought so conceptually with art?
As far as I can remember from a young age, until late teen age, I was obsessed with drawing. I was drawing at anytime and everywhere. I consider myself very lucky to be born in a family where arts were, and still, today are very important. Entering university truly opened a new perspective on arts. I think my work came to be more conceptual in order to conduct a better comprehension of myself. All of my researches comes directly from personal experiences. Translating them into matter is a way to give myself an outside look on my questionings on life. I see my work as an open discussion, where I hope that people can relate and understand something from themselves.
l’inertie du mouvement — inertial motion | by: Marion Paquette
1:1 ou quand l'ailleurs devient l'ici — 1:1 or when elsewhere becomes here | by: Marion Paquette
Your interpretations of converging and polarized concepts is eye-catching and such a unique perspective on behavior. How do you decide what elements to use to visually express your experiences?
I mostly choose materials for their capacity of creating contrasts in relation with the environment they are placed in. I’m really pleased by the polymorphic aspect of fabric, because it allows the object to take many form and that it can be folded and be displaced easily. Using white is a way to detach objects from their context and suggests a collide between the inside and the outside. I like the tension when emerge a incongruity in certain assembling, when materials placed together suggest an ambiguous feeling of something common and uncommon at the same time. It is a research of balance between the environment, the object and the body, where nothing is never really black or white, but more imbricated together and interdependent. It is in that intermediary zone that my work attempt to be place.
“I think touch is underestimated, not only in arts, but in the experience we have of the everyday life.”
When we first saw your piece "sortir le dedans du dehors – take the inside out" we were instantly drawn in. The contrast someone wearing pillows against a huge backdrop of snow is oddly ironic. Can you tell us a bit more about this concept, what it means, and your creative process behind it?
sortir le dedans du dehors | by: Marion Paquette
The idea for this project came at first in 2016. At that time, I wouldn’t feel comfortable at home and was fearing the outside at the same time. I didn’t know where to place my body and mind, so I thought of covering my body with pillows in a way to absurdly assure comfort and security. The project was produced in 2018, and by the end of 2019 I decided I wanted to document it during the winter on a huge pile of snow and I asked Cléo Sjölander a friend of mine, who is also an artist, to take the pictures. It really was a weird conjoncture, because at the same time the confinement due to the pandemic started. My perspective on this project really evolved through the years, and reactivating this piece at that uncertain time really brought another level of lecture. During the confinement, the idea of staying home was a way to feel safe from outside, but in the same time being in the same environment felt suffocating. In a sense, the project suggests that the feeling of ‘homeness,’ is a state of mind and it can be brought everywhere in order to feel safe. This is a concept I explore in many of my projects.
Your work features a lot of surfaces and textures giving everyday tangible objects a new perspective. Do you find yourself using other senses such as touch or smell when creating?
Yes, touch is a very important sense to me. I’ve never used smell in my artwork though but it can be an avenue! In general I think my work attempts to awake a tactile and sensitive feeling from a visual experience. In other projects, I literally invite the viewers to experience the piece involving their body and their own capacity to interact and communicate with materiality. I mostly use textiles, which emerges as sensitive matter, whether by the impression it gives of animation or by the urge to touch that it elicits. I think touch is underestimated, not only in arts, but in the experience we have of the everyday life. It is often associated with childness, or something impure. With the new technologies, and also with the new systems that comes with the arrival of the pandemic and our sterilized conceptions of social relations, touch is more and more dissociated from our realities. Nowadays I think this condition presents itself as a challenge for artists to reinvent and revisit the way we normalize our interactions in society.
Name something you're listening to at the moment.
Pirouette by TOPS
is my favourite song at the moment. I’m at the studio everyday these days working on a collaboration with the artist Clara Cousineau and we always listen to the whole album.
Comment les silences trouvent-ils écho — how do silences find echo | by: Marion Paquette
The striking work of "comment les silences trouvent-ils écho — how do silences find echo", Showed in artch, exhibition of emerging contemporary art, is so surreal and beautifully photographed, tying in artificial and natural elements. What is the story behind this piece?
This project is part of a continuous reflection on on how we tame our surroundings and familiarize with it in order to feel safe and comfortable. ‘Comment les silences trouvent-ils écho’ — how do silences find echo invites to establish a poetic dialogue between artificial and natural, where the textures of the territory echoed through the windows of the canvas and lead to temporarily reinvent the partition of the landscape. With these temporary appropriations of the natural space, I wanted to explore the notion of discussion, transparency and also failure in communication. I see the openings of the cape as a intention to dialogue with the environment, but the contrast that the reflective material impose to nature presents itself as a failure to connect and merge at a deeper level.
Who are some of your favorite creatives/artists?
I really enjoy the work of the German artist Franz Erhard Walther who mostly work with textile, making activatable and foldable objects. Otherwise, I’m really inspired by the work of Ana Rewakowicz, born in Poland and who now lives in Montreal. She works with inflatable objects, and portables architecture. I also love the work of Do Ho Suh who’s a south Korean artist, which focus on architecture space and identity. I really like his 1:1 architectures, made with sheer fabric. I also enjoy the work of Lygia Pape and Lygia Clark, both Brazilians artists, for their activatable and textile objects. The list could be longer, but to me what connects all these artists and what seduce me is really the idea of the body, the object and the environnement in relation with displacements and activation.
aménager l'aléa — to manage randomness | by: Marion Paquette
What has been your favorite project thus far?
This is a tough question! I would say my favourite project is aménager l'aléa — to manage randomness, which I made during a month residency in Itoshima, Japan at Studio Kura. It was such a unique experience to have the chance to define a daily routine in the countryside of Japan. The culture of Japan is really inspiring me in my life and in my pratice in general, I always find suprising links between my work and this singular country. To be alone for a month was also a really introspective moment. Based on this experience, I created a huge backpack cube inspired by the dimensions of a tatami, which is a traditional Japanese mat that also serves as a unit mesure to define the dimension of a room. I would brought the cube on my back at different locations around the residency, lay it on the ground and it suddenly serve as a temporary shelter. I would also fix found objects on his surfaces that would inform about the experience of the environnement. The bag as a nomadic habitat tries to image the idea of comfort offered by the house in an adaptable and mobile form, reflecting a body and mind in movement.
Your profile bio mentions Doux Soft Club, which appears to be a collaboration with other creatives. We’d love to know more about it!
Doux soft club is a collective of artist-curator I’m part of, along with the artists Mariane Stratis and the duo Pénélope et Chloë. We’ve met at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2012 where we’ve developed and shared reflexions on our practices. In 2017, two years after the end of our bachelor we decided to create the doux soft club collective to keep in touch and evoluate together. The collective presents an aesthetic of gentleness that puts forward themes linked to a rehabilitation of the sensitive through the practice of care, benevolence and resilience. doux-soft is envisioned from a capacity for wonder for the mundane. This approach, intimately linked with the contexts in which we take place, leads to a poetry of the ordinary. The projects probe, converse and take various forms of presentation: outdoor intervention, web work, artist's book, exhibition, performance. In this sense, performative work animate sculptural objects in order to reveal their sensitive and sensory characters.