On Vaste et Vague's website (in French)

Radio interview on Radio-Canada (in French)

The artist would like to thank the students, teachers and staff of Escuminac High School for their enthusiasm, commitment and support.

Au milieu des bureaux empilés (In Between Desks) is an interdisciplinary project born of the conviction that it is imperative to question notions of power, expertise, and credibility within the current debate on education.

The long-term project, which began in 2018, evolved over five successive cycles, bringing together 13 schools from three different countries: Montreal (2018); Carleton-sur-Mer (2019); Ebnat-Kappel, Wil and Wattwil in Switzerland (2019); Lévis (2019), London in the UK (2022), and now Escuminac (2023).

The basic framework for Au milieu des bureaux empilés (In Between Desks) relies on a set of foldable chairs that the artist brings from one school to another. By transforming a classroom with this installation, she aims to create a conversational space that students can inhabit and fill with the topics and issues that are meaningful to them, as well as experiment with new forms of exchange based on care and creativity. The project gives students the possibility to develop a sense of agency. They are both exchanging experiences and ideas while being attentive to how the exchange is evolving and how the group is doing.

After each conversation, the students and the artist have drawing workshops to draw the structures of their exchanges. These drawings collectively help the group understand the power dynamics, relationships, support networks, etc., that arise through the weekly conversations. As the project moves along, the students will be invited to come and hang their own drawings in the exhibition space, wherever they wish, reclaiming the meaning of the installation and contributing to it. Week after week, the exhibition will evolve with the students asserting the importance of their involvement.

In the exhibition space, five viewing stations, a video work, the artist's notebooks and objects from the project weave together a vibrant, multi-sensory archive of the long-term project. Each of the viewing stations provides an opportunity for privileged contact with one of the groups of students who took part in the project.

As visitors contemplate the structures of exchange traced on the translucent paper by the artist, they listen to the students' debates, stories and ideas. As one moves from one station to the next, they sense the different dynamics, rhythms, concerns and approaches of the different groups and therefore the different communities represented, but also the common claims and experiences that emerge and seem to transcend language barriers, borders and distance.

The artist will be in residence on site for the duration of the exhibition to allow new schools into the project.

The artist wants to thank Angela Cyr Bérubé, Ariana Brisk, Faith Martin, John Reed Arnault, Kaeden Germain, Racheal Isaac, Rin Lavallee, Shylad Sweetman, Summer Robson, Zalea Moores et Zoey Clement for being a part of this project and of this exhibition.

The artist would like to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) for the financial support.

See Au milieu des bureaux empilés (In Between Desks) (2018 - ongoing) Socially Engaged Art project

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