Esquisse to Figures, 2021

Nadège Grebmeier Forget: Echo Figures for Pending Spaces—Occupations for Camera

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Nadège Grebmeier Forget’s distinguished interdisciplinary practice unfolds via durational, live, live-streamed, and private performances at times resulting in drawings, photographs or installations. In these performances, she models and hybridizes herself to defuse expectations of beauty and explore the effects (and affects) of the concerned gaze on an unfolding identity as it is observed and analyzed by herself and others. Seeking to confront desires and ideals (aesthetic, commercial, sexual, etc.) through an empowered and performative manipulation of her own image, she intrinsically questions the labour of making and becoming; including the ways in which performance (of the self or art-making) can be documented, disseminated or exhibited.

Circulating within Montreal’s visual and performing arts communities as an interdisciplinary artist, project coordinator, curator, and cultural worker, Nadège Grebmeier Forget has participated in numerous events, festivals, conferences and residencies in Canada, Europe and the United States. In 2019, she was the first performance artist to receive the City of Montreal’s Prix Pierre-Ayot. She will have solo exhibitions at AXENEO7 in Gatineau (Fall, 2021) and Le Musée d’art de Joliette (Winter, 2022). Born in 1985, the first daughter of a 1950’s California Beauty Queen contender, she lives and works in Tio’tia:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal.

PROJECT STATEMENT

I’ve always used the architecture of places as starting points, my body moving according to space and the situation/ambiance imposed or created. Mainly working and performing from home, my body/image work often seeks to reproduce or reveal some sort of uncomfortable intimacy. Considering the context of this residency at an educational institution during this sequestered pandemic era we inhabit, I’m interested in the idea of imposing a sort of domesticity that would feel like a space of limbo, a non-space with non-time, reflected in the extensive use of beige in the gallery.

With this project, I would like to create a series of unfolding actions and images that would function through indirect or subjective viewing of the body in action. Simultaneously, I envision the space as a sort of canvas that will bear witness to an inner chaos or failure to resolve. The structure, actual actions and mechanism (camera work, live feed, role of documentation) will be revealed gradually through self-isolation within the space.

Echo Figures for Pending Spaces: Occupations for Camera is an experiment, an abstract extension of my current drawings with makeup on magazine pages, as well as several other threads through my practice over the years. NGF

Photo documentation: https://www.facebook.com

Featured artists:
Nadège Grebmeier Forget

Artist Interview

Videos

Video 1

ECHO FIGURES FOR PENDING SPACES—OCCUPATIONS FOR CAMERA (FIRST DECOR)

Selected captions were recorded during Nadège Grebmeier Forget's performance residency ECHO FIGURES FOR PENDING SPACES: OCCUPATIONS FOR CAMERA — produced at the Warren G Flowers Art Gallery, Dawson College, between March 1st and April 1st, 2021.

This footage was created during the first week of the residency and presented, looping, on a TV monitor placed in the gallery's exterior display case. All actions built up to the last take of this montage [Curtains] serving as proof of an active bodily presence in the gallery, documenting the production of a live drawing, finger-painted onto the gallery's entrance doors with foundation makeup.

Duration: 59 min 33 sec
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Time breakdown:
1 [00:00:00-00:01:24] Floor
2 [00:01:25-00:02:18] Ceiling
3 [00:02:19-00:14:29] Walls
4 [00:14:30-00:21:36] Rooms
5 [00:21:37-00:23:27] Left Corner
6 [00:23:28-00:25:19] Right Corner
7 [00:25:20-00:27:05] Body
8 [00:27:06-00:44:13] Windows
9 [00:44:14-00:59:33] Curtains

Video 2

ECHO FIGURES FOR PENDING SPACES—OCCUPATIONS FOR CAMERA (SECOND DECOR)

Selected captions were recorded during Nadège Grebmeier Forget's performance residency ECHO FIGURES FOR PENDING SPACES: OCCUPATIONS FOR CAMERA — Produced at the Warren G Flowers Art Gallery, Dawson College, between March 1st and April 1st, 2021,

In dialogue with works and interventions created during the residency, this footage was used as materials/imageries during the Facebook Live broadcast presented on March 28, 2021:

https://www.facebook.com/dawsongallery/videos/

Duration: 50 min 45 sec
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Time breakdown:
1 [00:00:00-00:23:24] Veiling
2 [00:23:25-00:30:03] Motifs for a looking glass
3 [00:33:04-00:33:00] Shimmering light
4 [00:33:01-00:38:02] Reflecting ambiance
5 [00:38:02-00:50:45] Matching techniques

Video 3

Recorded Live from Warren G Flowers Art Gallery —Facebook, March 28 at 5:33 PM.

Duration: 2 h 39 min 57 sec

"I’ve been occupying the Warren G. Flowers Gallery for almost 4 weeks now. I’ve been creating situations, sets for potential performances that are not actually happening or being seen. There are neither beginnings nor endings to everything I’ve been producing. I’ve been performing for myself–secluded from the College's student body–and wondering what the significance of this is. I’ve been meandering around the gallery, accumulating thoughts, ideas, and a tone. Till now, I’ve failed to share my documentation. Some sort of modesty, some sort of desire of privacy, hijacked my volition, my contract. I’ve been turning multiple cameras on and off, and on and off again. Actions from the inside, to the outside, for the inside. If Liveness is dematerialized, simply imagined, can the accumulation of this self-viewing build a space of being, of meaning, strong enough to make the need for the Other disappear? Here is an attempt to resolve some displacements for the sake of breaking away from this idea." NGF, March 28, 2021

Link to original Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/dawsongallery/videos/

Video 4

ECHO FIGURES FOR PENDING SPACES—OCCUPATIONS FOR CAMERA (FOLDED INTERLUDES)

Duration: 47 min 56 sec
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Time breakdown:
1 [00:00:00-00:36:29] The paper blind
2 [00:36:30-00:43:18] Ribboning
3 [00:43:19-00:47:56] Attention