Hélène Lord

2008-2009

Banquet et vestiges

Exhibitions

  • 2008Karsh-Masson Gallery, Ottawa ;
    Vaste et Vague artist-run centre, Carleton-sur-Mer
  • 2009Occurrence espace d’art et d’essai contemporains, Montreal

Ritual allows human beings to interrelate. Banquet et vestiges aims to inscribe in space such dualities as intimacy and coexistence, power and submission, and assimilation and difference. The familiar objects of the ritual that is a meal evoke habits and passages that reveal the history of our collective life. Diverted from their utilitarian function, stripped of their original meaning, these objects are the silent witnesses of our hectic lives, both private and public. Discarded furniture, plates, bowls, utensils, old silverware, furs; these domestic vestiges, gathered over the days, are ripe with memories. Out of place, against the grain of time, they nevertheless speak of the present. At the intersection of myth and reality, these wayward objects find a poetical function, against a human landscape.

Photographs: Richard-Max Tremblay