Peninsula exhibition by Michel Huneault
Gaspé, October 20, 2022 – From October 20, 2022 to April 23, 2023, the Musée de la Gaspésie presents, in collaboration with the Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie, Péninsule an exhibition of photographs by Montreal artist Michel Huneault.
With this corpus, the artist offers a contemporary representation of the physical and emotional impacts of climate change. This project invites reflection on ways to mobilize as a community to deal with these consequences.
Imagine the rising waters
With his project Péninsule, carried out between 2019 and 2022, the artist is interested in climate change and its effects on the coast of Bas-Saint-Laurent and Gaspésie. Equipped with a laser level, he travels the territory, initially trying to mark the landscape “to see” where the water will pass when the temperature increases by 2 to 4 degrees. “These are hypothetical projections, which have become lyrical and symbolic, because the water line varies continuously, depending on the seasons and the tides, the wind, the morphology of the bays, the glaciation of the waters, our occupation of the territory. Does this line exist if we don't look at it? ", he asks.
Art as a means of raising awareness
The population remains at the center of the artist's approach: "In this work, the local populations have been an essential source of information and inspiration - and even of accommodation - contributing, I believe, to a work to which one can relate one's own experience: past stories, joys or concerns of the present, nostalgia for the future. » Today, everywhere, the exaltation and the relief felt in front of the still irresistible beauty of a water's edge mix with a growing concern in the face of its instability, whether it has already been observed or announced. “It was a recurring point of discussion in my meetings, central, but never resolved. I think the corpus is about the complexity of this tension felt, about the difficulty of reconciling these contradictory feelings when it comes to climate change, between emotion and science, between love and fear, between inertia and the need to adapt. »
In the museum installation, the 35 exhibited photographs are also linked to video and audio components, created on the same territory by the artist. “Through this work of research and creation, I wanted to develop an entirely visual and sensory work, without recourse to oral or written linguistics in its presentation, perhaps to better grasp a feeling so difficult to name. »
A worrying reality
“These environmental events disrupt our lifestyles and have serious impacts on heritage and its management. says Vicky Boulay, curator at the Musée de la Gaspésie. “We thought it was important to present a unifying artistic project that would allow us to reflect collectively on how to manage these disturbances. “, she concludes.
Acknowledgments from the artist
This research and creation project was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, as well as the collaboration of several organizations active in the work area: the Vaste et Vague Artists' Centre, the Village en chanson de Petite-Vallée, the Douglas Community Centre, the East-Northeast Artists' Centre, the Gaspésie Museum, the Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie, the Center Cultural Center of Paspébiac, the Darling Foundry/Quartier Éphémère and the Artistic and Community Center of Matapédia Station. A very special thank you to the citizens who participated in the process in Bas-Saint-Laurent and Gaspésie, and supported it.
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Photo: Monticule, laser on photographed landscape, 2019-2022. Michel Huneault.
Information and interview requests:
Gabrielle Leduc
General Manager Coordinator
coordo.direction@museedelagaspesie.ca
418 368-1534, ext. 102
Source: Gaspésie Museum