stuffed rabbits - scarred rabbits
The Mainmises exhibition presented in Montreal in May 2006 developed out of a simple everyday object which had set me to thinking about various matters. Workers’ gloves, made in China, are sold in packages in every hardware store. Now, thanks to globalization, everything can be produced more cheaply in China, to the consequent detriment of working people here. There is thus an underlying opposition contained within the object itself: workers’ gloves (manufactured in China) versus unemployed workers here.
These workers’ gloves then morphed into a series of one hundred and fifty rabbits. The shape of the glove lends itself quite well to the form of a rabbit. The latter being extremely prolific, it becomes a symbol of sorts for the act of reproduction: from productivity to reproductivity. There is something of the assembly line in the increasing volume of production and in my own output in producing them, endowing each one with its own personality. How many different rabbits can be made using the very same materials: gloves, fleece and thread? They are all hand-made, and thus differ from one another in their shapes, their characteristics, their personalities…
These one hundred and fifty rabbits were made at the rate of approximately one per day. Then, over and beyond my original stated motivation, a new, unexpected facet began to emerge. Each rabbit was a subconscious revelation of what my state of mind and my outlook on the world had been on the day it was produced. A sort of log book.
In the studio, these increasingly numerous rabbits began to form relationships. Rumors were started; full-blown tales ensued. I rediscovered something which has always been at the heart of my work: revealing the relations that exist between images (or objects) and word(s).
The book presently being prepared at the Centre SAGAMIE, is not a catalogue but rather an object in which images and words are interlaced, and sometimes collide. Particular attention has been given to the manner in which things can be perceived. It should be remembered that these rabbits are all in some way crippled. What is perceived at first glance, naively and sympathetically, required, in fact, that fingers be cut off (the gloves) and that things be sewn together and patched (resembling in this way certain factory working conditions).
These stuffed rabbits are scarred rabbits. The words they elicit will be all the more cutting. Stories to prick up your ears.
Lucie Duval was born in Mont-Laurier. She works and lives in Quebec. She studied at the École des beaux-arts de Toulouse. She obtained, in 1983, her Diplôme national supérieur d’expression plastique (DNSEP). Her work, in which words are made to play off of objects and images, explores the relations and polarity between what is read and what is seen. Exhibitions of her work are presented regularly in North America, Europe and Asia. Her work is included in the Canada Council Art Bank and in the Collection du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. She is represented by the Isabelle Gounod Gallery in Paris.
She is presently preparing a solo exhibition to be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Baie-Saint-Paul, from May 29 to September 11, 2010, and she will also participate in the Femmes artistes exhibition at the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec, from June 17 to September 12, 2010.