Michael Blum
Notre histoire

After his exhibition War and Peace at VOX in spring 2014, which recounted the time spent on the run in Québec by French fugitive — and “public enemy number one” — Jacques Mesrine, Michael Blum continues his exploration of Québec history with his exhibition Our History || Notre histoire. The undertaking is ambitious, if not Herculean: show the dual Québec and Canadian identity from its “origin” to now. Blum began the project, which was completed during the Galerie de l’UQAM’s summer residency program and shown at the gallery from September 2 to October 4, 2014, in February 2014 with an email survey sent to over six hundred people in the cultural and art fields. 

The survey concerned the definition of Québec, the differences between Québec and Canada, and the possibility of another language being substituted for French and English. It also included the following question: “If a museum had to preserve the history of the differences between Canada and Québec, how would you envision it?” Blum’s own answer to this question is an exhibition presented as a museum — or, more precisely, as two museums, one devoted to Québec identity and the other to Canadian identity. The exhibition thus falls within the genre of “artist museums,” in which, Anne Bénichou posits — in a book recently written on the subject — “the artist is not so much a producer of objects, but a manipulator of signs.”¹ 1 - Anne Bénichou, Un imaginaire institutionnel. Musées, collections et archives d’artistes, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2014, p. 27. Blum’s work consists in creating a narrative through which a vast array of objects (human remains, artworks, common consumer products, tools, archaeological artefacts, liturgical objects) intended to reflect aspects of Québec and Canadian identity can be displayed. Visitors can discover this narrative through the wall texts that introduce each section of Blum’s imaginary museum, and through the extremely detailed labels that complement each object, describing its origins and significance to “our history.”