About —
This group show of artists from Quebec, Canada, and abroad addresses the role and nature of emotions in the world of work and, more generally, throughout our capitalist technological culture. The project is built in two parts, one devoted to emotions generated by contemporary transformations of the workplace, and the other to emotions that are literally put to work. These two broad sections of the exhibition are articulated around the following interrogations: What is the impact of the transformations of the market and of working conditions on the bodies, gestures, emotions, and behaviour of workers? How are emotions worked upon and how are they commercialized in a service economy where workers’ ability to master their emotions (what we call emotional work) plays an important role and where technology is used to transform what we feel into exploitable capital?
Emotions in the workplace
The self-employment model, touted for its more flexible pace and schedule allowing for better quality of life, is becoming widespread and giving rise to a proliferation of shared workspaces. Combined with the explosion of digital technologies, this model, which has several points in common with the status of the artist (who also works independently), leads to what has been called the “Uberization of work,” which adopts the logic of piecework in another form. The negative effects of this type of working relationship affects a growing number of workers, who find themselves having to take charge of all the entrepreneurial responsibilities, with the psychological and emotional weight this engenders, often without social protection and without being able to emerge from a state of precariousness. In this context, as with more traditional businesses, employers’ expectations are increasingly more demanding: it is no longer enough to do your job well, one has to demonstrate “proactivity” and creativity while accepting to engage in a rationale of permanent self-improvement. Managers set up seminars and team-building activities to promote well-being, but also, by the same token, to increase worker productivity. Thus, after having long-been repressed in the workplace, the emotions are now invested in by managerial processes, with both positive consequences (listening and communication are encouraged) and negative ones (instrumentalizing and normalizing the emotions, these methods become an increasingly intrusive form of control).
Emotions Put to Work
Taking an interest in emotions in the workplace also means taking into consideration how they are being worked upon. A service economy, in which customer satisfaction is king, values emotional competences—controlling feelings, interpreting and performing the verbal language appropriate for different situations, interacting with others, and so on. That being said, an emotional effort is required in all interpersonal relationships, such as interacting with one’s superiors, clients, or colleagues, which puts emotions to various degrees at the heart of all types of employment. Emotional work is often invisible, implicit, and little valued, which becomes the focal point of demands in certain environments. One can think of some professions linked to servicing people and to health care, historically—and still—mostly practised by women.
The artists in this exhibition prompt us to reflect on these topics and on the racial and gender injustices running through them, in works that illuminate, critique, and resist them.
French and English booklet
Artists in the exhibition
Marjolaine Bourdua (QC), Jacques Poulin Denis (QC), Pierre Dorion (QC), Jean-Maxime Dufresne et Virginie Laganière (QC), Melanie Gilligan (CA), Matt Goerzen (CA), Lauren Huret (CH/FR), Marisa Morán Jahn (US), Wanda Koop (CA), Daisuke Kosugi (JP) et Ane Hjort Guttu (NO), Liz Magic Laser (US), Anne Le Troter (FR), Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn (CA), Elisa Giardina Papa (IT), Julien Prévieux (FR), Laure Prouvost (FR), Laurel Ptak (US), Karine Savard (QC), Romana Schmalisch et Robert Schlicht (DE), Joshua Schwebel (QC), Cally Spooner (GB), Catherine Sullivan (US), Pilvi Takala (FI), Carl Trahan (QC), Amalia Ulman (AR), Gwenola Wagon et Stéphane Degoutin (FR).
NOTE
This exhibition contains several video works. We suggest you plan for a longer visit if you want to view them all from start to finish.
Biographies of the co-curators —
Maud Jacquin is an art historian and curator. With Sébastien Pluot, she directs Art by Translation, an international research and exhibition program involving partner institutions in four countries and participating artists engaged in a post-master’s program carried by the art schools of Cergy and Angers.
From 2015 to 2019, they developed a multidisciplinary research around a work by Alison Knowles, The House of Dust, and reactivated its generative potential through several group exhibitions, colloquia and performances. In 2016 and 2017, Maud Jacquin was co-artistic director of the Cneai, in Pantin and, before that, associate curator of Residency Unlimited, an artist residency in New York.
She completed her master’s degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and her PhD at University College London. Her research, published in various contexts, focuses on moving image and performance, feminist histories and theories, and theories of narrative and translation. Her dissertation focused on the politics of narrative in feminist experimental film and video, with a particular emphasis on the English scene of the 1970s and 1980s.
Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre holds an M.A. in Art Studies from the Université du Québec à Montréal and a B.A. in Visual Arts from the University of Ottawa. Appointed curator of contemporary art at the Musée d’art de Joliette in 2017, she has since produced more than twenty exhibitions, including projects with artists Kapwani Kiwanga, Shannon Bool, Jin-me Yoon, Monique Régimbald-Zeiber and Irene F. Whittome, many of which have circulated throughout Quebec, Canada and internationally. She is particularly interested in identity, cultural issues as well as questions of performativity and representation that problematize the intersections between reality and fiction.
With the support of Institut Français and the Goethe Institut.
Images in the banner:
Smile! Emotions at Work, views from the exposition au Musée d’art de Joliette, 2021. Photos : Romain Guilbault
You loved the work of Karine Savard ?
Watch documentaries from which she drew inspiration to produce some of her works and read her essay (that you can also find on the back of the poster available for free at the museum) right here: https://vitheque.com/en/publications/essays/exposing-work