Programming
Michelle Caron-Pawlowsky
Finishing Holds
Final Holds draws on the world of professional wrestling as a metaphor for care, absence, and grief, where the final move of a match echoes the last gesture of holding a loved one.
Final Holds draws on the world of professional wrestling as a metaphor for care, absence, and grief, where the final move of a match echoes the last gesture of holding a loved one. This text is composed of short instructional fragments drawn from a vintage wrestling manual (Pro-Wrestling Finishing Holds, 1985, Gene LeBell). Removed from their original context and recomposed, these phrases become more abstract; depending on how they are perceived, they can shift from choreographed acts of violence to instructions on how to hold someone with love.
Michelle Caron-Pawlowsky
Michelle Caron-Pawlowsky is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal whose practice is primarily rooted in installation and image-making. She is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at Concordia University. Her work has been exhibited in Canada and internationally, including at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (Montreal), Museo Spazio Pubblico (Bologna), Franconia Sculpture Park (Minnesota), Le Livart, and through Artch – Emerging Contemporary Art. Her practice explores transformation, ritual, and magic through installations, images, sculpture, sound, and text. She is interested in practices of mourning, queer ecologies, folklore, and the relationships between the human and more-than-human worlds, creating works in which the image becomes a material presence and a site of passage between the real and the mythic.