Textile artist puts Manitoba on the map

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/07/2020 (2254 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Twelve days before Quebec artist Mylène Michaud’s exhibit 1:1 was set to open at La Maison des artistes visuels francophone, COVID-19 forced the St. Boniface art gallery to close its doors.

The pandemic put gallery director Astrid Alexandra Keim in a tough spot. While the planned opening reception scheduled for March 26 was cancelled, Keim still wanted to uphold her end of the deal and ensure Michaud — and future artists exhibiting work at the gallery — would be compensated fairly and have an opportunity to display their art.

Rather than having Michaud come to Winnipeg to set up the exhibit and attend an opening reception in person, Keim got creative. She had the artwork delivered to the gallery via FedEx and set it up with Michaud’s help over Skype.

“We set it up together and we just left it up,” says Keim. “We were just going to leave it up and figure out things week by week.”

Now, after a 2 1/2-month period of closure, the doors of La Maison des artistes visuels francophone are open again (with reduced hours and a smaller capacity) and Michaud’s exhibit, which was originally set to close at the end of June, has been extended to the end of July.

Keim, who has been director of the gallery for five years, was in the middle of preparing a big celebration for Maison’s 20th anniversary when the pandemic forced a change of plans, but by staying flexible and taking it week by week, she was able to take some bad news (the cancellation of the anniversary celebration) and turn it into good news (an extension of Michaud’s exhibit).

In 1:1, a site-specific installation, Michaud combines computer work with knitting as she explores the similarities between pixelated images and knitting structure through a ratio of 1:1. Through her depictions of the land, the artist poses questions about time, space and the digital era.

“All of these are textile pieces. They have been knitted and then fabricated together,” Keim says. “She does site-specific work, so everywhere she has an exhibition, she does a map of that place.”

The exhibition features textile work depicting a bird’s-eye view of Winnipeg at night, images of the Prairie landscape and the coast of Hudson Bay.

“Every year we sort of have a focus, and over the past couple of years it’s been based on ecology and Earth and land and how we relate to it,” Keim says.

That focus is shifting soon to include the physical body and its relationship to ecology with the upcoming exhibit by Charley Farrero, a French artist who will be coming in from Saskatchewan with his ceramics in tow.

Since Farrero is driving in, he won’t need to self-isolate upon arrival and will be able to help install the work and attend an opening reception, an event that will run a little differently than normal.

“We’re being cautious,” says Keim. “We don’t want huge public events.”

To attend Farrero’s opening, which will take place at a date to be determined in August, audiences can book an hour-long time slot to view the exhibition. The gallery will operate a maximum capacity of 20 people at a time.

“When they leave, we’ll let the next group in,” Keim says. “We’ll see how that works. We usually have huge events all summer long, but everything’s been cancelled, so we’re just trying to figure out new ways to come up with events.”

One of those new ways includes a few upgrades to the gallery, like barriers made of Plexiglas — a material that seems to have taken over from toilet paper as the must-have item of the pandemic.

“Whoever is making it is making a lot of money,” Keim says. “Plexiglas has gone up in price incredibly because everybody wants it all over the country.”

frances.koncan@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @franceskoncan