About —
Through an assortment of both historical and contemporary artworks, the exhibition Voir/Noir, presented at the Musée d’art de Joliette from September 23 to December 30, 2007, investigates the way in which vision operates when sight is taken away. Variations in light and their effects on the pupil, the destabilization induced by darkness and the recourse to senses other than that of sight are some of the ideas tackled in this exhibition.
Curator Rebecca Duclos has brought together works by contemporary artists Leah Garnett, Ann Veronica Janssens, Alexander Pilis and Peter Seal in order to offer visitors an unusual experience in a museum venue where sight is usually the primary consideration. A selection of works from the Musée’s collection by Geneviève Cadieux, Clara Gutsche, Sorel Cohen and Kiki Smith give added breadth to the theme of the show, as do the nineteenth-century religious paintings depicting their subjects dying, in ecstasy, praying or sleeping, each one evoking a contemplative visual experience. The exhibition is the more unusual in that it also presents works executed specifically for this project — photographs of the Musée’s storerage areas by the artist David Ross and a sound project created by Doug Moffat with works from the collection.
Curatorial Text —
Prior to her work as independent writer and curator, Duclos worked in the gallery and museum field for over ten years, and has taught cultural studies and art history programmes at several universities including the University of Manchester in England. She is currently working on the exhibition Depot, to be held in 2008 at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery in Ontario. She is currently finishing her Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester and is writing the curriculum for a new university programme in Curatorial Practice for the Maine College of Art in Portland , Oregon, United States.