Programming

For some time now, there are no more small yellow square-shaped papers dotting the kitchen at my mother's house. She forgets that she must remember, or she agrees to forget. I don't know anymore. In this writing project, I want to shout out my own fear that she is forgetting and that I am forgetting by translating the memo into public space. Once spread out and exposed to view, do personal words [ailments] become more real, less disposable, universal, soothing? What happens when the interior is exposed? How can we move from the form of the memo to the sign while preserving the DNA of everyday writing? Through what appears to me as a personal process of acceptance, I explore different formulations of forgetting such as repetition, fragmentation, and perforation of writings.

My creative projects question, through a reflection on inhabiting, the [so-called] boundaries between public and private space, identity and otherness, intimate territory, and social fabric, as well as the forces at work in the act of inhabiting. My practice unfolds in relation to otherness, in the domestic environments I visit unannounced. The confinement of 2021 has led me down introspective paths carved out by writing, leading me to reflect on the interior from within. To the body and to the house. Not in a retreat perspective, but rather in a circulatory movement between the self and its context. I use photography, video, installation and writing to give form to my questioning in different spaces, public or private, real, or virtual.

Geneviève Thibault

Born in Matane, Geneviève Thibault chose to study photography, native studies, and ethnology to reflect on inhabiting and its issues. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and is a 2019 winner of the Prix international des Nouvelles Écritures (Freelens, France). Her photographic projects have been shown in events and solo exhibitions in Quebec and Ontario. Since integrating writing into her practice during the 2021 confinement, her poetry and critical texts have been published by Le Sabord, Esse, Espace art actuel, Centre VU and Presses de l'Université du Québec. She teaches photography at the Cégep de Matane while pursuing a master's degree in art practice at the Université du Québec en Outaouais.