Jacynthe Carrier — Pièces montées

The Pièces montées project is an invitation by Les éditions Esse to artist Jacynthe Carrier to create a performative scene on the theme of food. Known for her appropriation of rural and urban spaces where bodies in action reinvent the territory, here Carrier chooses to create a tableau vivant in which material predominates over space. The piece takes the form of a banquet uniting seventeen guests who manipulate various plant materials and foods. From each image—from fruit-stained hands lingering on materials and sullying the whiteness of flour and fabrics, to glass and porcelain sculptures, mounds of spices, or paths of cherries—emanates a poetry both pure and powerful. The juxtaposition of the images with a poem by Laurence Brunelle-Côté accentuates the poetic scope of the Pièces montées series.

Closer to an artist’s book than a monograph, this publication extends the experience of the work. The selection of some forty details of the performance thus recomposes, in a different manner, the artist’s banquet, not only to encourage a deeper appreciation of this ephemeral work, but also to create, from what we could call the leftovers, new pièces montées that will stimulate further reflection on the intersection of art and food.