Jacynthe Carrier
in Bonaventure

Artist Jacynthe Carrier composes performative scenes where the body and space meet. Through a practice associating the living with the image, she observes our relationships with the environment, with the other, with our ways of inhabiting, creating and belonging. In her practice she invites ephemeral communities that she composes to occupy places through different forms of presence, physical as well as symbolic. In response to the many ways of inhabiting the territory, and whether they stem from a more everyday formula or refer to the history of places or to the fragility of our environments, the artist’s performative scenes underscore and explore the power of gesture, of presence and of living together. From these events she devises stories by creating photographs, videos and installations that observe them, recount them and propel them into the imaginary, into a space for contemplation. Her projects are created in dialogue and in close collaboration with people, communities, artists and artists’ collectives.

In keeping with that approach, the artist was invited in the summer of 2019 to undertake a performance in Chaleur Bay. During an exploratory visit she discovered a dyke at McGraw Beach, very close to Bonaventure. She went there every day, fascinated by the rhythm of the place and the balance among the different elements that shape the area. She spent a long time contemplating a migration of warblers that were taking a few days off from their flight. Hopping delicately on the rocks, feeding on the driftwood, in this place of piles built by man and by what the water left behind. Between movement/stability, mutation/permanence, anchorage/drifting.

On this heap she invited some 20 citizens from the area to a performance. Very much like perching birds they turned up, furtively, to spend a few hours there. Without a word, their unbalanced bodies filled the space with gestures, with sounds, with strips of fabric, with smoke. A wind-borne feather, patterns on the water, masts made up of roped together tree trunks… Filled with deep concern for their territory, they explored this space with their gestures and their presence. They lent new contours to the place. We looked at them for a long time. Photos fixed their movements, their dances, to create visual tableaux recounting another part of the place, its spirit, a story.