New upcoming project: QUADrature
June 12, 2020
Curated successively by Diane Gistal, Ariane De Blois, the Musée d’art actuel / Département des invisibles and Bénédicte Ramade, a new artistic initiative will take place within a microsite produced by Galerie de l’UQAM for the entirety of the 2020-2021 season, under the title QUADrature.
The project is inspired by the work Quad (1980) by Samuel Beckett, a television play involving four interpreters who make their way around a quadrangular stage, following rigorously determined lateral and diagonal paths. Of similar stature and undifferentiated gender, the interpreters, wearing long hooded tunics covering their faces, pass each other without ever touching, leaving center stage empty at all times. What is astounding is how much Beckett’s work resonates with the current worldwide pandemic.
The general curator invited four others to each develop one of the project’s four acts, as well as involve four artists. This initiative aims to bring about new curatorial approaches involving artists from Québec, with existing, transformed or new works created for virtual screens. These exhibitions will be displayed successively with the help of a specifically designed microsite, reflecting the principals of Quad’s script. They will ultimately be reunited in a fifth presentation, considered a global conversation that will present the work of four curators and 16 artists.
With QUADrature, designed specifically for the virtual world, the desire to adapt the project as soon as possible to the gallery’s physical spaces remains, seeking to give the works their full material and experiential existence for the public’s benefit.
General curator: Louise Déry, in collaboration with Anne Philippon and Philippe Dumaine
Guest curators: Diane Gistal, Ariane De Blois, Musée d’art actuel / Département des invisibles and Bénédicte Ramade
Artists: 16 artistes from Québec
Exhibition period: As of September 2020