Lieu d’exposition
/ Exhibition place
Biography
Born in Victoriaville, Annie Baillargeon lives and works in Quebec City. Her work relates the female body in interaction with its environment and in its relationship to the image. Her approach touches on states of transition and decline in the light of feminist concerns through strategies of self-representation and staging.
Her work includes solo and group exhibitions in artist-run centres and museums as well as numerous participations in major events in Quebec, Canada, the United States, South America and Europe. She co-founded two performance collectives: Les Fermières obsédées from 2001 to 2015, and B.L.U.S.H. since 2015. Her work, which has earned her multiple grants and awards, was notably selected for the Sobey Arts Award in 2017. She is represented by Galerie 3 in Quebec City. Her works are part of several collections such as the National Gallery of Canada and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
Approach and works on display
Les amas, dans l’envers du décor des ruines des affamées (2018)
In this series called Les amas, dans l’envers du décor des ruines des affamées (The heaps, behind the scenes of the ruins of the starving), digitally multiplied female bodies articulate a plurality of stagings that propose contemporary, even feminist, female mythologies.
Here, the artist plunges us into the heart of a party where her gestures are subjected to the objects occupying the space: costumes, festive objects, iPhones and kitchen tools.
Annie Baillargeon shows us the other side of the coin. Under the guise of illusion, the celebration brings with it its share of scars and tragedies: the relationship to image, beauty, anorexia, bulimia, abortion, addiction, rape and drug addiction. In an approach close to autofiction, the artist unveils under the glitter of her set, a heap of testimonies from the experiences of her female entourage and her own experience. In the wave of the #metoo movement, these works have been reflected and performed as a form of self-healing.
The artist would like to thank Etienne Boucher for taking photographs of the works and for his collaboration in the shooting sessions.