QU’EST-CE QU’ON PEUT CONSTRUIRE SUR UN SOL EN MOUVANCE
What can you build on land that keeps moving

Solo exhibition. OPTICA Centre d’art contemporain, Montreal CA
22 April 2023 to 17 June 2023
Private view on 22 April 2023
Conversation with Didier Morelli on 30 April 2023

Exhibition floor plan & Acknowledgments

Video tour of the exhibition on Vimeo

Press release & Exhibition text

Qu'est-ce qu'on peut construire sur un sol en mouvance interweaves several narratives belonging to the same story. The first is that of a ceramic bean pot given to the artist by her grandmother, which prompts a reflection on the significance of collective projects across generations. The second is that of the industrialization of butter production on the territory we call Canada, from homestead production, mostly carried out by women until the 19th century to mass production in the 20th. There is then the closely related story of commercial relations between Canada and the United Kingdom in a colonial context, the products of Canadian agriculture being rationalized for profit, thus eroding a subsistence economy. The exhibition delves into the workings of an “economic system that divides us” by traversing the layers of time and the articulations of the single history of dispossession. By interconnecting different perspectives on a rapport to the land and the relationships this generates, Verviers works through a series of tensions in which we must learn to live.

Read the full exhibition text by Véronique Leblanc

Qu'est-ce qu'on peut construire sur un sol en mouvance has been awarded the Pauline-Desautels 2024 prize awarded annually by CIRCA Art Actuel to a woman, a committed artist whose sculpture or installation work has stood out for the public and the art community as a whole over the past three years.

Read the press release on CIRCA Art Actuel's website

->