Photo credit: Jin Kim
Micro-video installation
Performance with earth, flax seeds, greystones | 10 min
Collectif Vierge
Grey Nuns Garden, Montreal
2016
This video-performance is both a sacred acknowledgment of biological agency, and women's knowledge, as well as an exploration of gendered archetypes. Considering the word Motherhouse as a starting point, we simultaneously explore different aspects of the mother: this building which sheltered so many residents; the garden as an expression of the concept “Mother Earth”; and the capacity of women's bodies to give life. These different sites are symbolized by the specific materials we used in our performance: gravel, soil and flax seeds. Moved by the silence of stone, the strength of women, and fragility of life, we consider women's bodies as spaces of precious fertility, yet not necessarily reproductive. At the same time, we focus our actions in and on the garden, what Michel Foucault describes as “the navel of the world in its center” (Heterotopias, 1967).
Details and documentation of the exhibition Un paradis sans pommiers here and here.