On the website of Manif d'Art

Floorplan of the exhibition & Acknowledgements

In her work, Anouk Verviers performs a cyclical process of splitting and reassembling. Moulding flesh and raw materials with her hands and mind, she reframes complicated histories through what she describes as “feminist science-fiction experiments.”

In Building, destroying, and rebuilding cob columns as high as our bodies, Verviers mixes various forms of water, impressive mounds of clay, and moving bodies to address both “women’s work,” so often made invisible or overlooked, and “women’s pain,” under-studied medically. Through shared blood and sweat, Verviers invites a group of fellow performers to tend to the performative installation for the duration of the exhibition, which is in constant movement and in need of hydration.

Further on, we hear Verviers’s roboticized voice narrating the theoretical foundations of her practice against rotating medical illustrations of an ovary with endometriosis lesions. Here, Verviers reclaims the act of cyclical labour by combining it with the politics of chronic pain, the histories of patriarchy and sexism, and the contradictions of the Anthropocene in a sci-fi-inspired pursuit of kinship.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
The artist thanks the Taïwan Ministry of Culture (R.O.C.) for its support.

PERFORMERS

Hsiao-Chien Chiu
Elie-Anne Gagnon
Annie Lafrenière
Marion Médecin
Élie Papineau
Audrey Séguin
Anouk Verviers

ARTWORKS

Building, destroying, and rebuilding cob columns as high as our bodies (2026)
Performance. 3h.

Building, destroying, and rebuilding cob columns as high as our bodies (2026)
Installation.
385 lb of cob. Tarps, survival blankets, sprayer. Aluminium, poplar wood, wheels. Steel, reused greenhouse plastic.
Video documentation of the most recent performance filmed by the performers looping on the monitors during the exhibition. Video HD without sound. 3h.
Flesh pink lighting gels. Electronic music. 67 min.

Cybernetic hands playing in the mud (a community of bodies hosting migrating cells) (2023) Video HD with stereo sound for headphones. 5 min (perfect loop).

Compostable mass on a drip (2026) Reused laboratory boiling flask, climbing rope, rescue pulley system, aluminium, pomp, tubing. Steel, wheels, survival blankets, cob.

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