Inside Some Place Else

The artist proposes an installation divided into three parts that communicate a state of being rather than an event or experience. In the first space it is an effect of strangeness that settles in the reconstruction of a room composed of different fragments of places that the artist has visited or inhabited in the past. Different components of his memories occupy the space. It is not a question here of duplication but of interpretation of several places merged into one. Thus, what is presented is not a real space but a psychological space.

The second part is occupied by a miniature house in which a copy of the room represented in the first part is reproduced. The miniaturization of the place gives an impression of familiarity. This displacement of space and scale is a device that the artist uses to reinforce the sensation of destabilization in the spectator. An audio tape accompanies the model and reveals the heart of the work, the theme of nostalgia. It is a dialogue between two characters, the artist in both cases, about the feeling of nostalgia they feel for the place they are in. Through their conversation, they convey their sense of loss to the viewer.

The third part consists of a video projection in which a ghostly apparition of the artist is presented as she walks down a dark corridor holding a birthday cake with lit candles in her hands, with the intention of offering it to another self. This double presents itself as an amplifier of solitude to become a representation of the absence of the other. To compensate for this absence, the double emerges and in order to fill the lack.

– Marie-France Beaudoin

This work was initially presented in 2001 at the AGYU (Art Gallery of York University) and later in 2003 in the exhibition L’art qui fait boum: La triennale de la relève québécoise en art contemporain in Montreal. 

Photo credit : Guy L’Heureux