woocommerce-shipping-per-product domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131complianz-gdpr domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131I can see you now\nthat my face is falling off\nmy own face\nto make room for yours\nso we can see eye to eye\nand hear the voice of our hands\ntouching Bruxelles at night\n\u2013 Maryse Larivi\u00e8re, 2015<\/pre>\n\n\n\nProduced in conjunction with an eponymously titled exhibition at Kunstverein Toronto (April\u2013May 2015), Maryse Larivi\u00e8re\u2019s Where Wild Flowers Grow <\/em>is a decisively optimistic contemporary romantic trip. The book is a collection of poetry, prose, and discourse in which experimental, personal, and anecdotal forms of literary realism are used. Larivi\u00e8re\u2019s approach to writing encourages multiple forms of reading. By treating text as both meaning maker and compositional tool, she ensures that Where Wild Flowers Grow<\/em> is able to migrate back and forth between the worlds of the literary, theoretical, sculptural, and performative. The book\u2019s twenty-five separate pieces of text are meant to be consumed more like movements in a symphony than chapters in a book. Some pieces are only three short lines long, others read like theatrical dialogue or personal anecdote, and still others are nothing more than brief statements printed near the top of an otherwise blank page. Where Wild Flowers Grow<\/em> offers rare insight into the complexities of the artist\u2019s innermost desires and provides readers with a physical<\/em> sensation of reading. The book\u2019s exterior silky matte finish is soft to the touch and there is a satisfying tactility to the weight of its heavy stock pages. Also including a series of minimalist gestural line drawings, the book is best experienced through an active letting go that allows rhythm, flow, and mood to merge with intellectual content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where Wild Flowers Grow <\/em>is a modern love story focused on the intimate and nuanced relationship between the artist and her art. With a practice that is research based and inherently multidisciplinary, Larivi\u00e8re exhibits a distinctly genre-bending blend fueled by intellect and curiosity. Through a synthesis of fact and fiction, her writing does not mimic the real world, but instead circles in and around it. Inspiration is drawn from a deeply personal connection to memory and a strategic use of free association. There is a fluidity and flex to this approach that ties in with the methodological concept of \u00e9criture f\u00e9minine<\/em>, developed by French theorist H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cixous to prioritize communication from within the female unconscious. \u00c9criture f\u00e9minine <\/em>is a writing of oneself that connects the written word with the female body, thus reclaiming writing as a feminist act. Words are employed by Larivi\u00e8re to indicate both sound and silence, establishing a rhythm to the book that is expressed both implicitly<\/em> (in its overall mood or \u201cfeel\u201d) and explicitly<\/em> (through the use of literary tools such as repetition and alliteration). Through a methodical interweaving of the physical with the psychic and the sensual, she uses writing erotically to unite the body of the reader with that which is read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its characteristically frank and inherently romantic style, Where Wild Flowers Grow<\/em> does not shy away from tackling the most underlining of human concerns. Larivi\u00e8re ignores taboo and celebrates clich\u00e9, opting to engage full throttle in a genuine conversation about love, life, art, philosophy, and death. She is unapologetic in her optimism, allowing her characters to act according to a sense of sentimentality that verges on the na\u00efve. A statement such as \u201clets make a revolution in the hallway\u201d is presented completely without irony, therefore managing to convey a sense of invincibility that is normally reserved for being freshly in love. And yet, just as love is exalted as a gateway to joy, it is also presented as potentially obsessive, banal, dictatorial, or even traumatic. Images of death and dying, a weakening of the self, a dove flying into a lover\u2019s face\u2014all are offered up as fair warning for the unabated lover. It may be true that love can bend space and time, but it can also grow oppressive, old, and stale, prompting everything from duty-bound, to desperate, to self-destructive behaviours. This approach to love, which communicates bliss in the same breath as uncertainty, is reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s film \u00c0 Bout De Souffle<\/em>. In a mood shared by Larivi\u00e8re\u2019s two central characters, Godard\u2019s character Patricia uses her best passive passion to declare, \u201cWe look each other in the eyes, but what for?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a clash between romance and reality, we turn to art and poetry to save us. In Where Wild Flowers Grow<\/em>, Larivi\u00e8re understands all too well that the artist chooses life by simply choosing art over death. Just as love and life will fade if they are not nurtured, art, too, may die if it is not given the conditions it requires to thrive. Art, writes Larivi\u00e8re, is \u201ca certain intensity discharged by the sensuous meeting of materials.\u201d It is only through intellectual meditation and a commitment to looking that we can rescue art from oblivion. By paying close attention, by allowing the artworks to speak, we will understand that the story they tell us has always already been the story of ourselves.<\/p>\n