Babiche 1

(Click to enlarge)

2019

If it was not for a pig sprawling comfortably with his folded legs on an armchair, an octopus clinging around the legs of a coffee table, thirty or more snails scattered on a carpet and three lizards perched on a chest of drawers, the visitor might think he or she is in a living room. The objects are displayed in circle to let the visitor go around and pass through. Unless one knows about cultural practices of the native or of the repairer of rush seats, the material used, called babiche in Quebec, is relatively unknown. 

I chose to represent animals with exceptional qualities and shapes and not for their symbolic values shaped by culture. As a result, a dialectic is created between the manufactured and the natural, the fabricated and the organic, the stiff and the winding. The familiar objects mixed with the animals are aesthetically matched and wish to give rise to personal stories. In my personal mythology there was a day when as a small kid I came home from school and found several pigs that had wandered and settled in our living room. Working with organic material is my way of using what exists naturally to continue to address our natural ties to the world.