VIDEOTANK #32
Subsistences
September 6 – October 5, 2024
Artist
Raphaëlle de Groot
Overview
The Subsistences project is the result of a year that Raphaëlle de Groot spent in the Minganie region of Quebec. Based on de Groot’s conversations with people living in the region and explorations of the area’s unique natural phenomena, the project offers a chance to learn about the land. In June 2017, Subsistences took the form of a “bivouac-exhibition” that stopped over in seven villages situated between Longue- Pointe-de-Mingan and Nutashkuan. The bivouac, composed of a pick-up truck, an Innu tent, and a boat transformed by de Groot, was deployed differently in each community, where the artist asked people to share their experience of the territory, defined as the Mingan Archipelago, the sea, or the land of forest and bog. The film of the journey reveals relationships that de Groot created among the different elements that she gathered over time. Produced in collaboration with La Boîte Rouge vif, it combines filmmaker Maxime Girard’s observant, sympathetic gaze with Raphaëlle de Groot’s artistic vocabulary. It intersperses excerpts of interviews that she conducted throughout the year with moments shared during stopovers of the bivouac-exhibition and actions that she performed beyond the public manifestations of the project. It thus sketches out a documentary and poetic path leading to the essential challenges of living in the region: exploitation of its resources, the cohabitation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, the impact of human activity on the environment, and the transmission of cultures and practices.
This film was produced by Partners in Art as part of LandMarks2017/Repères2017. Curator: Véronique Leblanc.
Artist
Raphaëlle de Groot is a Quebec artist who lives and works between Montreal and Orsigna, Italy. Her creative projects are always the fruit of an encounter with a living environment, a territory and communities. She is interested in aspects of the human experience that are difficult to represent, such as sensations, the sense of belonging to the world and various states of attention, presence and engagement. Her approach is known for its open, collaborative methods of participation at the crossroads of art and social fabrics. Raphaëlle holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2007) and has been presenting her work on the Canadian and international scene for over twenty-five years, at numerous events including Nuit Blanche in Paris, Momenta | Biennale de l’image in Montreal and the Venice Biennale. She has received numerous awards, including the Sobey Award for the Arts in 2012. Communes mesures, her most recent solo exhibition, was held at the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides (2021). In autumn 2023, she inaugurated her first permanent public artwork, Les constellations de l’hippocampe, at the MEM – Centre des mémoires montréalaises, selected as a finalist for the Prix les Arts et la Ville in the culture and development category (2024).
