Art lifts up
The UQAM gallery, in collaboration with the Cinémathèque québécoise, present
an exhibition organized and distributed by Jeu de Paume, Paris
Uprisings
“Uprisings” are a natural consequence of my personal research
I have departed from a poetic metaphor that I have often found especially in the work of Victor Hugo and the Romantic poets
and that is the idea of the storm that rises up
and because of this the first part of the exhibition is about elements that are unleashed
and furthermore a human society is an element in itself
when we look a bit closer, we notice that all the persons that make up this element are human bodies
so it is very much an exhibition about the human body
how it moves, etc
with this desire to rise up
so there are things which are evident
there is no need to read the information panel
we see immediately that people lift their arms, that they open their mouths
so this is the third part: they have words to say
they express themselves, they have complaints, slogans, poems, they have songs
so the third part is about sentences and words
not only texts, but words
by acts pure and atrociously white
as in Vietnam, in Congo
by impeccable German youth
a yellow star between the teeth
by the Russians
by the return to order
by means of repression
be quiet
it’s a universal language
we are born to understand it
with its tear gas words, baton words
and once one has said what one does not agree with
the police arrives to say no, no…
so the fourth part is about conflicts
which is the part that everybody expects from the beginning
in an exhibition about uprisings, you will mainly see images of demonstrations
and they are in this part
But I don’t want to stop here
so my principal idea is that the desire to rise up survives
in those who have risen up themselves
it ends with the situation of women
women as the element of possible uprisings in a society
it begins with Antigone
to feminists today
it is an exhibition which is made to travel
and Montreal is the latest stop
in every city I realized that I was in the capital of urprisings
the idea is not to make an encyclopedia of uprisings
but every time the visitor recognizes his or her own history
looking left and right, he/she will see what happens in Venezuela, in Russia
but he/she will have his/her own history
that will serve as the guideline
There is no hierarchy of uprisings
there can be an uprising of an entire people
or an uprising of 10 persons in a village that is very important
