Exhibitions 2001-2002
November 1 - December
1, 2001
Opening Thursday November 1, 6 - 8 PM
Peep
Cyndra
MacDowall and Suzanne Grégoire
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Cyndra MacDowall, Untitled
from Penetrating the City
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Text by: Katy McCormick
This peony is an empty house
In which each of us recaptures night
—Jean Laroche, Mémoires d’été, Cahiers
de Rochefort.
Outside and inside, private and public, visible and invisible:
pondering such issues can easily lead to an entanglement within the dialectics
of black and white, off and on, good and bad. As Bachelard warns in The
Poetics of Space, "It has the sharpness of the dialectics of
yes and no, which decides everything. Unless one is careful, it is made
into the basis of images that govern all thoughts of positive and negative."1
Artistic projects, like philosophical constructs, are always in danger
of oversimplification. Life is messy, truth often lies somewhere ‘in
between’ and many contemporary artists identify themselves with multiple
subjectivities, forging a system of beliefs composed from elements of
various ideologies. We are attached to the idea of mobility and stability,
born of both urban and agrarian histories. Our photographic representations
of those histories generally grow out of a practice which is partly (nostalgic)
preservation and partly (deliberate) invention.
Peep offers intimate views of two sites existing along a continuum of
female subjectivity: sexual adventure (flânerie) and domestic
tranquillity. Refuting their mutual exclusivity within the scope of desire,
the juxtaposition of Cyndra MacDowall’s lesbian couples in Penetrating
the City with Suzanne Grégoire’s homestead views in Tout-bas
sets up a dialogue around notions of intimate space and its various readings
as both private and public, inside and outside, visible and invisible.
These artists share a common desire to position the viewer as promeneur
(stroller) within a landscape of intimacy, and to bring to mind the workings
and subjectivities of intimate relationships.
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| Suzanne Grégoire, Tout-bas (detail), 1999 |
In Grégoire’s Tout-bas (soft spoken), miniature views
of home interiors, alleyways, and fragments of landscapes emerge in diaphanous
tones, placed like stones across a series of white photographic prints.
Reminiscent of a book unbound, this piece occupies the wall like a pathway.
Contained yet open, the images serve as portals, inviting entry even as
they urge us forward. Moving in to read these impossibly small scapes,
proximity makes visible exquisitely drawn impressions of a distant world.
"The isolated villages on the horizon become homelands for the eyes.
Distance disperses nothing but, on the contrary, composes a miniature
of a country in which we should like to live."2 Entering these spaces,
we escape the dangerous present, the work-a-day deadlines and breathe
a momentary calm. Arranged intuitively as irregularly spaced diptychs,
some elements are sharply framed, solid and anchored in our presence.
Others, however, float on the page like pinhole projections, lacking defined
edges, still others seem to be on the brink of disappearance. Even as
these scenes provide rest and comfort, there is an implicit tension in
their sense of impending dissolution. In creating a diaristic work, an
‘open book’ constituted by the non-events of everyday life—a
woman tending to her plants, two people walking in the country, a man
raking autumn leaves—Grégoire reminds us how precious the
simple moments in our lives can be. More importantly, the people and places
within them describe cardinal points on the compass which guides her through
life. Both preservation and invention, Tout-bas is a history contained,
like an album, forever "domesticated and protected from contamination,"
even as it sits vulnerable and exposed to the breath of strangers.3
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| Suzanne Grégoire, Tout-bas (detail), 1999 |
MacDowall’s Penetrating the City describes subjects moving
on the edge of visibility—literally emerging from the darkness of
her exquisite black and white prints—deliberately playing upon the
cliché metaphor of lesbians as ‘women of the shadows.’
Author Terry Castle argues that the perception of lesbianism is that it
is "somewhere else: in the shadows, in the margins, hidden from history,
out of sight, out of mind…"4 MacDowall acknowledges this stereotype
while creating a series of images which actively inverts such assertions,
placing lesbian subject(ivitie)s front and centre, as they tango through
the sensual city night. In a publication aptly named Mapping Desire:
Geographies of Sexualities, Sally Munt suggests "a subculture
made invisible by its parent culture logically resorts to space-making
in its collective imagination. Mobility within that space is essential,
because motion continually stamps new ground with a symbol of ownership."5
The territory of the flâneur was first articulated in 19th-century
Paris, a city remade in the interest of the gaze. "Landscape—that,
in fact is what Paris becomes for the flâneur. Or, more precisely:
the city splits . . . into its dialectical poles. It opens up to him as
a landscape, even as it closes around him as a room."6 MacDowall’s
lesbian flâneur follows the impulse to promenade even as
she takes possession of the city as ‘a room of her own.’ Photographically
speaking, her stomping ground is Montreal. Metaphorically, it is a multifarious
place in the collective imagination: a site, a map, and a locus of exchange.
Giving shape to the space of lesbian desire, it precedes an actual place.
Beautifully crafted, these images are shot using several viewpoints, making
room for (multi-desiring) viewers to actively imagine an erotic/sexual
interaction. Punctuated by a subtle ambient sound piece, this city penetrates
even as we move through it.
These bodies of work tease, whisper, and seduce, drawing us in, urging
us along. Exploring psychic space, likened to an intimate landscape, these
artists navigate the complexities of female desire in order to expand
upon existing maps. Presenting poetic images, both artists adopt modest
forms. In the face of bigger is better, Grégoire employs subtle
means to engage the viewer in a treasure hunt whose object contradicts
the obsessive materialism of our age. Managing a "subversive seduction,"
MacDowall’s images allow for an open engagement.7 Inviting us to
position ourselves alternatively as flâneur, voyeur, and
participant, MacDowall draws us in enough to ‘try on’ her gaze,
effectively co-opting the dominant heterosexist one. Within the gallery,
private lives are etched on walls, the public realm is made over, its
possibilities re-imagined. Home is an open door. There is no outside too
large to be encompassed by our subjective countries, framed à la
loupe.
Footnotes
1. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1994), 211
2. Ibid., 172
3. Susan Stewart, On Longing (Durham and London: Duke University Press,
1993), 69
4. Terry Castle, The Apparitional Lesbian (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1993), 2
5. Sally Munt, "The Lesbian Flâneur," in Mapping Desire:
Geographies of Sexualities, ed. David Bell and Gill Valentine (London,
New York: Routlidge, 1995), 120
6. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin
McLaughlin (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1999), 417
7. Cyndra MacDowall, in conversation with the author, September 2001
Biography
Cyndra MacDowall
(MFA Concordia University, 1995) is a Toronto-based artist, writer, and
educator. Since 1987, her work has shown across Canada, the US, and the
UK, and is widely collected by private and public entities, including
the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary
Photography. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards from the
Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council and others. Currently she teaches
photography at Sheridan College/University of Toronto, and the Ontario
College of Art & Design. In addition to teaching she researches and
writes about photography and representation and has been politically active
on behalf of artists' rights. Penetrating the City has been shown at the
Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, in Halifax, and in Saskatoon.
Suzanne Grégoire
Originally from Ontario, Suzanne Grégoire lives and works in Montréal.
She has participated in several shows in Québec, Ontario, and Europe.
Recent exhibitions include: Tour de Villeneuve, produced in conjunction
with le Mois de la photo à Montréal (2001); Les interstices
at Galerie Vox, Montréal (2000), and Demi-Veille at Centre Vu,
Québec (2000). She also participated with the Fovea collective
in Private Parts/Parties Intimes at FOTOFEIS, the International Photo
Festival in Scotland (1997). In 2002, she will be part of a group show
at the Moser Fine Arts Center Gallery in Joliet, Illinois. Grégoire
holds a BA degree in Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montréal.