Archipel (Archipelago)

2011-2016

Rocks of various shapes, textures, and sizes compose Archipel, a mineralogical collection of sorts, presented through photography. Giving the impression of geological specimens or celestial objects, the images induce an impression of a loss of scale. Before the object removed from its context, we could find ourselves so close that we can’t sense its dimensions, or else so far that we can construct an image only through imagination. Archipel is a metaphor for territory and community, and evokes a universe in which the individuals are inseparable from the collective, like the ensemble from its components.

Archipel suggests an individual reading of every specimen, even as it remains forever connected to the others and to the whole—a group of islands or ideas where one can be alone or travel from one to another. Giving the impression of appearing and disappearing, the specimens seem solid, but photography makes them elusive, almost vaporous. The stones, isolated and magnified, allow us to see their details, textures, marks, scars, or transparencies, which tell of the stories and natural forces that remain, however, imperceptible, at the surface of things.

Thanks Jacinthe Robillard, Christine Arseneault-Boucher, Gentiane La France, Valérie Litalien.