An exhibition by Guillaume Brisson-Darveau
January 17 – March 29, 2025
Opening: Thursday, Jannuary 16, 2025 as of 5:30PM @ Artexte’s exhibition space.
As part of his research project in Artexte’s collection, Guillaume Brisson-Darveau focused on art projects and any other documents that reflect experiences associated with HIV/AIDS. This research led him to examine how artists, writers, and activists contend with cultural images of the virus to create their own representations of the disease, and how this approach constitutes an act of agency.
Faced with attitudes of relative indifference towards current HIV/AIDS issues, Brisson-Darveau wanted to reactivate a collective memory; to examine the silence around it and the factors that contribute to this silence, be it grief, fear, guilt, or the fact that the disease is no longer fatal, at least in wealthy countries. His research resulted in a collection of text excerpts, fragments of which he later printed onto second-hand clothes. This created a kind of wearable archive, like a skin, a body, or a memory that one can slip into. The process as a whole is a way for him to become part of a broader lineage by wearing the marks that others have left behind.
Read the exhibition booklet HERE
Take a look at the exhibited documents HERE
About the artist:
Guillaume Brisson-Darveau is an artist and researcher living in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. His most recent projects have been strongly influenced by reflection on the body, the hybrid body, and representations of the body transformed by contemporary society. The works that emerge from this research are situated at the intersection of sculpture, performance, and fashion. Through his images and forms, Brisson-Darveau attempts to describe a human condition and its complexity, and to bring to light a world filled with possibilities, desires, and fears.
Brisson-Darveau’s work has been presented in Canada and internationally, including at the Biennale CONTEXTILE (Guimarães, 2024), the MACBA (Buenos Aires, 2023), the Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine in Trois-Rivières (2022), Engramme (202), and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo – Parque Forestal (Santiago, 2018). He has attended numerous artist residencies, including at the La Ira de Dios and the cheLA Centro Hipermediático Experimental Latinoamericano (Buenos Aires, 2023 and 2019), the NARS Foundation (New York, 2021), and the Atelier Mondial (Basel, 2018). He is currently a doctoral student in art studies and practices at UQAM; his research is articulated around accounts of the experience of “trouble” through a material practice.