Habitat COMMODORE

Spring 2017

Community

Mentorat

« Occupying large areas of land considered crucial to our consumption habits, abandoned lots, agricultural lands, wetlands and even mobile home parks have become vulnerable to urban sprawl. Inspired by the mobile home park where I lived as a child (in Vimont, Laval), I want to underline the richness of these communities and the friendly environment that characterizes these fragile micro-systems. Nomad in name only, I wonder about the mobility of these houses and the potential expansion of the land they occupy.
Every abandoned lot is an opportunity for development. The commercial real estate and housing developers currently investing in Chomedey’s commercial area, near the Montmorency metro, are racing to construct what will be Laval’s new downtown. This transformation of the immediate urban environment should be questioned, as much for the impact it will have on the neighbouring communities, as for how it will affect the natural and social landscape.
In this first phase, I will meet with mobile home park residents to collect information about the site’s history to better understand the current dynamics of the neighbourhood. I will photograph participants’ homes to produce a series of drawings that will be used in a performance during my artist talk. This collection of information will be archived as texts and drawings, and disseminated via Verticale’s website.
The second phase will consist in the symbolic inauguration of the Habitat COMMODORE mobile home park construction project. This new “sensitive construction” site will take the form of an ephemeral installation and a participative performance with the Vimont park community, the neighbourhood surrounding lot, and other guests, in order to open a dialogue on the site’s identity and its future. »

— Stéphanie Nuckle

Stéphanie Nuckle

Laval-born Stéphanie Nuckle is interested in suburban issues and the development of contemporary art within her community. Her practice reflects on mass consumerism and the standardisation of the image through urban signage. Using the ubiquitous codes that govern our routine actions and shape our experience of the world, Nuckle attempts to give these new and playful meaning. More specifically, she imbues them with a sense of the absurd in order to subvert their primary function as normally maintained by city authorities.

The artist uses silk-screening processes to produce work in multiples and in series, and as a way to favour chance apparitions, ambiguity, doubt, accidents and defects. Her installations mainly consist of printed paper and suggest structured systems in which narratives are developed, and where interactions between the public and the performer(s) unfold as play.

Stéphanie Nuckle received a BA in visual and media arts from UQAM in 2015. She is actively involved in several collectives, including the Complot project (13th edition) and Local 16, an emerging artist collective whose mission is to democratize contemporary art in the Montérégie. She recently completed an artist residency at the Atelier d’estampe IMAGO (Moncton).

Artist’s website

Caroline Boileau

Caroline Boileau explores ideas around the body and health through an art practice that combines performative action, drawing, video and installation. She is interested in the various ways we inhabit, represent and speak about the body. Since 1995, she has participated in numerous residencies throughout Canada and in Europe. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the US, Belgium, Spain, Austria, Finland, Norway and Brazil. She holds an MFA from Concordia University.
Recently, she presented La peau entre les mondes, a performance in the form of a tableau vivant at the Parc Walter-Steward, as part of ODYSSÉE 2004-2014 by Dare-Dare. In 2016, she presented her performance work at Mobius, in Boston, and at the Musée d’art de Joliette during a week-long residency as part of Stéphane Gilot’s exhibition, Le catalogue des futurs.
In 2016-2017, Boileau was artist in residence at Concordia University’s Grey Nuns Pavilion, where she developed a research project, as well as actions and interventions for the community of students living in residence there. During the same period, she also spent time in Granby, where she developed a long-term project through 3e Impérial Centre d’essai en art actuel. This residency project inspired reflections on a collective vision of the future through an intergenerational collaborative and creative process.

Boileau’s drawings can be found at Galerie Robert Poulin in Montreal, and her video work is distributed by GIV [Groupe intervention vidéo].

Artist’s website

This project offers one event

Participative performance and artists talk

May 26th 2017
4.30pm

Partner

This activity is supported by the Programme pour les arts et les lettres de Laval 2015-2018, Soutien aux projets des organismes et littéraires professionnels of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.