The Log House and the Ocean

September 25, 26 and 27, 2019
As part as VIVA! Art action 2019
Cindy Baker, Crash Pad, dc3 Art Projects, 2018. Photo : Stephanie Patsula

Laval is the ocean; the ocean is the world when the artist is dreaming. On the banks of the Rivière des Prairies, she share her dreams in intimate moments with friends and strangers in order to help bring forgotten memories to the surface and drag them out onto dry land. She would like to bring her dreams to life for you, with your assistance. Then, the artist builds a log house every night to house her dreams.

Will you bring me:

A small birthday cake and a handful of change
A puff on your vape with cotton candy-flavoured e-juice
Reinforced-toe pantyhose
A giant bag of lucky charms marshmallows
Several baby food jars with lids
Real and artificial tall grasses, potted
Pears complexion soap
2-3 metres of white and silver fabric, covered in stains
A vending machine in the lobby of a Ramada hotel
A ride to the gas station
Hamburgers and toast
2 dozen bagels
An unfrosted cake, still in the tin
A trip to the candy store
Bum her a smoke
Many small stickers and a tiled bathroom I can put them in
A leather hood
A trip to Burger king with someone who can read Korean
A trip to a church with a gift shop
A ride in your RV
Bring your dog
A small head of leaf lettuce and a loaf of rye bread
A rifle-shaped stick
3 dozen fancy donuts to take to the festival. You will likely eat most of them on the way.
Matching bird costumes
Small pieces of selenite
A trip to 7-Eleven in Pierrefonds

In her current practice, Cindy Baker focuses heavily on her ten-year catalogue of dreams, exploring the relationship between trauma, memory, and the body, and building on both past work and her ongoing interests in social systems and embodiment. The artist believes that the borders between our dreams and their connection to a deeper meaning may be unveiled through re-visiting them in waking life. She is interested in the potential for transformation, and the opportunity for a close examination of that transformation, in realizing her dreams. It is an experiment in awe and wonder grounded in cynical acknowledgement of the possible. For her, the art lies in unpacking how she might be changed through this process, and how that might change the world.

Photos : Paul Litherland

Cindy Baker

Based out of Lethbridge and Edmonton, Alberta, Cindy Baker’s work is informed by a fierce commitment to ethical community engagement and critical social inquiry, drawing from queer, gender, race, disability, fat, and art theories. Baker’s interdisciplinary research-based practice moves fluently between the arts, humanities, and social sciences; she works with diverse materials and techniques from the low-craft to digital fabrication and performance, emphasizing the theoretical, conceptual and ephemeral aspects of her work. Baker’s practice draws from two decades of experience working and participating in art, queer, and fat communities; she has worked in non-profits throughout Western Canada. Currently, she is a sessional instructor at the University of Alberta, an independent facility development consultant, and contract art technician.

Baker holds an MFA from the University of Lethbridge where she received a SSHRC grant for her research in performance in the absence of the artist’s body. She is represented by dc3 Art Projects in Edmonton.

This project offers multiple events

Partners

VIVA ! Art action
From September 25 to 28 2019, Verticale presents, in collaboration with eight other partnering centers, the VIVA! Art action festival 7th edition, four days dedicated to action art at and around Ateliers Jean Brillant in Saint-Henri.

Fermentation, science and fiction
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