La famille [The family]

For his project La Famille, artist Christian Bujold made periodic visits over the course of a year to the private home of a family in the neighbourhood of Sainte-Rose, while they were absent. Facilitated by Verticale and a memorandum of understanding regulating these visits, both parties remained anonymous to each other throughout the entire process, until the closing event.

Apprehended this way, anonymously, the house became the site of representation of the family’s identity for the artist. In this unknown space, Bujold began his occupation passively, intervening only through observation, notes, photographs, drawings, etc. He immersed himself in the material and sensorial elements that surrounded him and that responded to the exterior framework of references from his one private life. How does this collectively intimate and vulnerable space interrelate with the individual identities of its occupants and to the identity of their family clan? The bit-by-bit gathering of information and reflections on site fed into the long-term development of a multidisciplinary body of work, whose elements came into focus over the course of the project and long after as well.

” I was a ghost who occupied the home and observed its occupants before or after their presence, out of sync with them by a few hours, like a kind of echo. I imagine they might have sensed something similar with me, the person who visited their home once a month without a trace, or very little. Maybe they forgot about me. It’s possible. I spent long hours in each room, paying close attention to the sounds, textures, objects, photographs, the characteristics of each little insignificant thing, the creaking of the rocking chair, bits of paper, changing habits, the sudden movement of furniture, a child’s drawing, a new decorative object, a hastily abandoned breakfast on the kitchen island, the anniversaries, traces left in the bedroom carpet, hand-written notes, the smell of fresh bread, the change of seasons, the calendar, to-do lists, children’s clothing and accessories that change over time, and my transcendent presence. I became attached, like a watermark, to this family I still don’t know and never really met. I remember a surprising amount of experiences; each door would open onto three more, creating an infinite network of senses… I was in relation, but not in contact.”

— Christian Bujold