Jocelyne Thibault

Before embracing life as an artist, art issues and art’s presence in Laval were completely foreign to Jocelyne Thibault. Was this due to wilful blindness? Or a lack of visibility on the part of local artists? These two questions, while still unanswered, run parallel through the artist’s mind, crossing and intertwining each other to form a kind of DNA chain, with a few missing pieces.

Blindness and visibility are among this Laval artist’s central concerns, and these will guide her project in Verticale’s archives.

So what does this “blindness” include? The fact of not seeing, not knowing, not recognizing? If she doesn’t see, is it because it isn’t visible, not present, incomprehensible? Maybe she didn’t know how to look. What was she doing while Verticale’s artists were striving to show their work? Can she try to catch up, to better understand her place as an artist in this ecosystem?

Thibault will look at the motives behind the centre’s founding artists, searching the archives to find an emotional link she can connect to. Naming things helps her to remember them. By re-reading written documentation, year by year, she will reinterpret her research by drawing, photographing, and making audio recordings of her thoughts, and later translating and transposing this into a personal, revised form. She will pay attention to her own construction of the story, to the way her reading of the archives will allow her to understand the works and practices of artists who have shaped the very essence of Verticale and built its DNA, including herself.

For Thibault, this residency will be a celebration of art in Laval. And for that reason, to immortalise the archives, there will be flowers.