Monique Régimbald-Zeiber
Les écrits d’Anne H. : couvertures rosâtres

2003

Les écrits d’Anne H.: couvertures rosâtres is the first of the artist’s Les grandes romancières series, a cycle of works emerging from a reading of great female novelists, namely Anne Hébert, Jane Austen, Elsa Morante, and Marguerite Bourgeoys. With this work, Régimbald-Zeiber begins her practice of handwritten text, which the artist describes as a mode of “reading accompaniment.”  The work is composed of five canvases which make use of the published fragments of Anne Hébert’s Le premier jardin, a novel that traces a part of women’s history, in this case, the “Filles du Roy” and their 17^th-century odyssey to the New World. As in many of Régimbald-Zeiber’s works, Les écrits d’Anne H.: couvertures rosâtres evokes a sense of history that conjures memory and speaks to what is forgotten. Taking a feminist standpoint, the artist examines history with a small “h” by looking at the quotidian herstory of women whose lives and names go unremembered. In so doing, this work offers a reflection on the construction of both history and memory.