Yann Pocreau. Patrimoines

In partnership with the Conseil des arts de Montréal en tournée

Artist: Yann Pocreau

Maison de la culture Mercier, arrondissement Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve

January 13, 2018 - February 18, 2018

After its successful presentation at Galerie de l’UQAM in the fall of 2016, Yann Pocreau’s exhibition Patrimoines is back in Montréal thanks to a partnership with the Conseil des arts de Montréal en tournée. Starting at Galerie Les 3C in LaSalle on October 26, 2017, this circulation will eventually lead the exhibition to Maison de la culture de Mercier and Maison de la culture de Pointe-aux-Trembles. This tour is an opportunity to pursue with the Montreal public the reflections on art, health, memory, light and well-being raised by Yann Pocreau.

The exhibition

Over the past years, Yann Pocreau has had the unique opportunity to witness the construction of the new Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM). Under the Art and Architecture Integration Policy, he has been developing a process-driven work there that will culminate in 2021 in the form of a book. For over three years, he has also been accompanying his mother on her visits to the CHUM, where she is being treated for dementia. In the dual situation that has become his day-to-day reality, one thing has emerged clearly: the imperative to reflect, as an artist, on the hospital environment and the notions of heritage it conjures. The starting point of this exhibition is the disappearance of the existing Hôpital Saint-Luc, a component of the CHUM that will soon be dismantled and replaced by a new building. Hospital architecture is part of the project’s theme, but its main focus is our sometimes paradoxical attachment to these places that shape our lives and our relationships to birth, health and death – and, above all, to the friends and relations who at some point we are obliged by love to chaperone, often repeatedly.

The exhibition Patrimoines presents new installations composed of recycled elements taken from the Hôpital Saint-Luc, including part of a hospital room, light bulbs, furniture, a few other artifacts and photographs. The exhibition is the product of a residency at Galerie de l’UQAM, lengthy discussions, fascinating encounters and a number of collaborations. For example, artist and filmmaker Anna Lupien has joined Pocreau as co-director of a video portrait of the hugely inspiring Auriette Breton, head nurse and doyenne of the Saint-Luc staff. This exhibition, which follows the hospital’s replacement and the inauguration of the new CHUM, will nourish a collective reflection on the symbolic significance of the hospital milieu and the human relations it invokes.

Centre culturel et communautaire Henri-Lemieux, Galerie Les 3C
October 26 – November 25, 2017
7644 Édouard, LaSalle, QC

Maison de la culture Mercier, Studio A
January 13 – February 18, 2018
8105 Hochelaga, Montréal, QC

Maison de la culture Pointe-aux-Trembles, Maurice-Domingue exhibition room
February 24 – April 1st, 2018
14 001 Notre-Dame East, Pointe-aux-Trembles, QC

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