Central to this essay are the works of Nad\u00e8ge Grebmeier Forget and Manon Labrecque, whose political leanings and activities I am unfamiliar with, but whose works often invite feminist readings, however heterogeneous they may be. It is a heterogeneity that, in my view, promotes a broader understanding of the multiple, intersecting issues raised by feminisms. I also look at Julie Delporte\u2019s journal drawings, since they, like Grebmeier Forget\u2019s and Labrecque\u2019s work, seem to adopt an auto-fictional perspective in which the representation of the \u201cvulnerable\u201d body challenges its \u201cpublic dimension.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/90_DO04_St-Gelais_manon_labrecque_apprentissage-scaled.jpg\")
apprentissage<\/em>, 2015, installation view, Expression, centre d\u2019exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe, 2016.
Photo : courtesy of the artist & Expression, centre d\u2019exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Seemingly antithetical proposals, with explosive portrayals of the body in one versus the withdrawal of the body, which \u201ctranslate[s] a sense of powerlessness, an inability to communicate,\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Nicole Gingras, Manon Labrecque\u200a\u2014\u200aCorps en chute<\/em> (Montr\u00e9al: \u00e9ditions Nicole Gingras, 2002), 62 (our translation).<\/span> in the other, Grebmeier Forget\u2019s and Labrecque\u2019s works converge in their sense of intimacy, in their \u201cembodied\u201d representations of the self. Yet, in my view, these representations express a feminist perspective that cannot hide the artists\u2019 gender consciousness. Rather than subjugating the body to specific actions, both Grebmeier Forget and Labrecque endeavour to show the illusory domestication long rejected by numerous feminists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In her performative exhibition \u2014\u2009Hier est aujourd\u2019hui.,<\/em>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Vu, centre de diffusion et de production de la photographie, Quebec City, from February 11 to March 13, 2016. <\/span> Grebmeier Forget made playful use of her body, its image, and the space it occupied. Inside a pink cube, whose form and colour connected the clich\u00e9s of the supposedly neutral exhibition space and a shade with decidedly feminine overtones, the artist appeared in a continuous live video feed from her studio\/home. To observe the artist, viewers had no choice but to enter the cube. And to be observed, the artist had to adapt to the constraints of the \u201cpanoptic\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200awhich, we should note, she delib\u00aderately chose and which allowed her to exist through the eye of the other, whom she forced, for the duration of the visit, to see her exactly as she chose, as she abandoned herself to an auto-fiction whose outcome she didn\u2019t necessarily seem to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps seeking to master the body\u200a\u2014\u200aor, rather, the changing identities that shape it\u200a\u2014\u200athe performance artist indulged in excess, using various accessories and gimmicks, as well as a multitude of bodily gestures, to transport viewers into a visual frenzy that made it impossible to see or identify everything that flashed on the screen. One can state with confidence, however, that these objects and gestures played overtly into a stereotypical vision of the feminine that responds in some way to social norms and expectations. \u201cTo challenge the notion of femininity is the consummately feminine act, a protest that can be read as evidence for that which it seeks to contest\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Butler, Undoing Gender<\/em>, 177.<\/span>\u200a\u2014\u200aa challenge that Grebmeier Forget seems to imply through her staging and presentation of materials. Sequins, pearls, ribbons, lace, mirrors, seductive glances, and hair play, but also speech impeded by a camera inserted in the mouth, garish if not grotesque makeup, solid and fluid materials acting on the resistance of a body that has repeatedly been put to the test\u200a\u2014\u200aall this and more is spread over more than a hundred hours of recordings. At times, the artist seems listless: the fatigue \u201cof doing,\u201d perhaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In conversation with Martine Delvaux,6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - On Sunday, October 30, at Maison des arts de Laval during Nad\u00e8ge Grebmeier Forget\u2019s exhibition LIVE 11-03-16, 12 h\u200a\u2014\u200a17 h<\/em>, August 28\u200a\u2014\u200aNovember 6, 2016.<\/span> feminist author of Les filles en s\u00e9rie. Des Barbies aux Pussy Riot<\/em>, Grebmeier Forget admits to feeling a sense of solidarity with these \u201cgirls\u201d presented as \u201cstill lifes,\u201d \u201cfetish girls,\u201d or \u201cliving tableaux,\u201d not for attempting to show their true nature, but for attempting to transgress the limits that define them. It is an act that, evidently, seems to take a great deal of time and energy, and that perhaps explains the artist\u2019s apparent weariness. Always in motion, the image that she presents of herself is not in conflict with some unachievable ideal; instead, it underlines the fact that this ideal is perpetually under construction, and that failure is guaranteed if one\u2019s goal is to attain a truthful identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grebmeier Forget\u2019s performances involve dizzying streams of images,7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - which have become somewhat of a signature for the artist. It\u2019s as though there were never enough time or space for her to target her subject in the process of becoming, and that subject, in spite of her, merges with a representation of the \u201cpublic\u201d body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whereas \u201cconstantly producing oneself\u201d is no guarantee for a genuine image of the self in Grebmeier Forget\u2019s work, with Julie Delporte, it is \u201cproducing nothing\u201d that makes us believe we are nothing. Here, I am thinking specifically of a page in Delporte\u2019s illustrated diary [NOTE count=8]Journal,<\/em>[\/NOTE][REF count=8] Julie Delporte, Journal <\/em>(Toronto: Koyama Press, 2013), n.p.<\/span> in which the female protagonist says, \u201cagain, this false idea that if I don\u2019t draw anything, don\u2019t write anything, I am a nobody (who gave me this damn disease of wanting to be a somebody?)\u201d This thought appears in a drawing of a computer on a table, its screen showing boxes without images\u200a\u2014\u200aa sign, among others, of this identity crisis. \u201cIf I am someone who cannot be<\/em> without doing<\/em>,\u201d says Butler, \u201cthen the conditions of my doing are, in part, the conditions of my existence.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Butler, Undoing Gender<\/em>, 3.<\/span> But what do these conditions permit me to be<\/em>? Between \u201cconstantly producing oneself\u201d and \u201cI am a nobody,\u201d don\u2019t all representations of the self imply a level of ambiguity that deserves to be questioned?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n A Body of One\u2019s Own or Beyond Oneself<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What Grebmeier Forget strives to show in the collapse of her studio\/home, Labrecque endeavours to define in the video installations touch\u00e9e<\/em> (2015) and apprentissage<\/em> (2015), presented in the exhibition L\u2019origine d\u2019un mouvement.<\/em>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - The exhibition, held at Expression, Centre d\u2019exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe from August 27 to October 23, 2016, was curated by Nicole Gingras.<\/span> Both works involve the experience of a body constrained or put to the test in its quest to represent itself, to give itself a reality<\/em>.11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Judith Butler has commented extensively on what could be called \u201creal\u201d life by evoking, among others, women and sexual minorities in contexts in which violence arises. See her Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence<\/em> (London and New York: Verso, 2004).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n In both touch\u00e9e<\/em> and apprentissage<\/em>, Labrecque appears to be in search of herself, someone who seems unable to make up her mind to stay where she is. In touch\u00e9e<\/em>,a looped video shows a woman, the artist, advancing tentatively with eyes closed in a confined space. In fact, she\u2019s trying to touch a drawing of her hands suspended on a transparent screen in front of her, but only fleetingly before pulling away, distancing herself from the image. It\u2019s as though the correspondence\u200a\u2014\u200aor, more importantly, the conformity\u200a\u2014\u200aof the images lasts for only the space-time of a touch,<\/em> rapidly dissipated and constantly reattempted. The brevity and inconsistency of this moment, repeated over and over, transforms it into a vestige of an encounter between the self and a projection of the self. Here, failure makes a stronger impact than success, something that Nicole Gingras had already observed about the ensemble of Labrecque\u2019s work, noting that she seems to \u201ctake malicious delight in cultivating failure\u200a\u2014\u200aa failed movement, faltering words, the missing part of an image.\u201d12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - Gingras, Manon Labrecque<\/em>, 34 (our translation). <\/span> Yet this \u201cfailure\u201d seems to echo what Jack (formerly known as Judith) Halberstam claimed:13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 13 <\/a> - J. Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure<\/em> (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011).<\/span> that failure can be beneficial, or even salutary, insofar as it appears here as an expression of resistance to mastery\u200a\u2014\u200amastery of the body, of the self; being in complete possession of one\u2019s whole being. Hence, Halberstam insists that we \u201cresist mastery,\u201d specifying that \u201cwe might read failure<\/em>, for example, as a refusal of mastery.\u201d14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 14 <\/a> - This refusal calls for a reconsideration of the savoir-faire that directly impacts the construction of knowledge and identity, whose objectivity has long been questioned by feminist [NOTE count=15]epistemology.[\/NOTE][REF count=15]See Elsa Dorlin, \u201cVers une \u00e9pist\u00e9mologie des r\u00e9sistances,\u201d in Sexe, race, classe : Pour une \u00e9pist\u00e9mologie de la domination<\/em>, ed. Elsa Dorlin (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2009), 5\u200a\u2014\u200a18.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Appropriating one\u2019s body, inhabiting it, making it one\u2019s \u201cown,\u201d embodying it: this is what appears to be happening in apprentissage<\/em>, which again shows a woman trying to connect with what might be the silhouette of her alter ego. Here, the image of a woman, filmed in a relatively large, open space, is projected onto a wall on which an outline of the artist\u2019s body is drawn. It is within this outline that the blurred figure in the video tries to fit, testing the limits of her body. She repeatedly falls back to the ground, withdrawing into herself, as though satisfaction could not be found within the fixed frame, each time leaving before her the empty silhouette. The objective of this vertical-to-horizontal movement, repeated in a loop, does not, however, seem to unfold with the expectation that the female subject will ever be contained in its totality, or as a whole, within the drawn representation. Anna Khimasia also acknowledges this notion of incompletion in Labrecque\u2019s work: \u201cHer exploration of the body moving in time and space seems to reiterate the way in which our sense of being is always in process and never fixed.\u201d16<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 16 <\/a> - Anna Khimasia, \u201cManon Labrecque, L\u2019origine d\u2019un mouvement,\u201d Etc Media<\/em>, no. 106 (Fall-Winter 2015\u200a\u2014\u200a16): 93.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t fully inhabit myself,\u201d notes the character in Delporte\u2019s Journal<\/em>, expressing a tension between the girl and the woman. \u201cI need to stop being this little girl trapped in a woman\u2019s body,\u201d reads the text next to what appears to be an abstract ink drawing of female breasts. It\u2019s as though, here again, there is a quest for the self, without an express expectation to succeed. What falls down in Labrecque\u2019s, does not transpire in Delporte\u2019s, and is constantly reiterated in Grebmeier Forget\u2019s work evinces that any representation of the self has many shortcomings, which, paradoxically, give it its power and resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following Halberstam, who suggests that feminists believe in a resistance \u201cthat does not speak in the language of action and momentum but instead articulates itself in terms of evacuation, refusal, passivity, unbecoming, unbeing,\u201d17<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 17 <\/a> - Halberstam, Queer Art of Failure<\/em>, 129.<\/span> and considering the \u201cuncertainty\u201d with which the body gauges our (my) sense of belonging, it seems timely to perceive these works as offering resistance to prescribed representations of bodies, women, and feminisms\u200a\u2014\u200aand this, even if they bear silent testimony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translated from the French by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/90_DO04_St-Gelais_Forget_Hier-est-aujourdhui-scaled.jpg\")
\u2014\u2009Hier est aujourd\u2019hui.,<\/em> screenshot, extract of the performance on 25-02-2016.
Photo : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Forget_Hier](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/90_DO04_St-Gelais_Forget_Hier-est-aujourdhui-_expo-scaled.jpg\")
\u2014\u2009Hier est aujourd\u2019hui.<\/em>, exhibition view, VU, centre de diffusion et de production de la photographie, Qu\u00e9bec, 2016.
Photo : \u00a9 VU \/ Hubert Gaudreau
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"labrecque_touch\u00e9e\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/90_DO04_St-Gelais_labrecque_touchee-scaled.jpg\")
touch\u00e9e<\/em>, 2015.
Photo : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/90_DO04_St-Gelais_Delporte_Journal-2-scaled.jpg\")
Journal<\/em>, extracts, L\u2019Agrume, Paris, 2014.
Photos : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/90_DO04_St-Gelais_Delporte_Journal-scaled.jpg\")
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