Maison de la culture Mercier

Studio 102 at the Maison de la Culture Mercier is a different type of experiment. After several studio visits, I realized that the artists presented in this iteration work in contemporary painting, yet create forms that go beyond the canvas. Oski Awoyo’s work is imbued with the colours, rhythms, and energy of his birth country Haiti. The immersive installation I Painted Myself to Death contains years of a life spent in the studio: paintings, objects, and memories form a collection made in the Haitian, DIY tradition of artistic assemblage created out of necessity. Caroline Douville explores the cognitive processes by which members of the diaspora examine their distant identity and connect it to their local base. Also of Haitian origin, Douville incorporates in her paintings frames made of copper and sheet metal, materials widely used for housing in Haiti. Exhibited as an installation, the works of Christine Major envision painting as a space in which images can eschew the logic of recording and have a subtler, more open and relational presence. Although painting shows something to be seen, her works focus on erasure. Working with Major was very important for me: her Rencontre (2003), which represents a studio, was part of the exhibition Views of Within and set the tone for the section on artist studios. We met by chance in May 2022 at York University, where we had been invited to participate in the arts program’s Summer Institute. I was there at the invitation of Michel Daigneault and Janet