Threading In-Between is a new digital video presentation by Geneviève Johnson, a component of the artist’s ongoing quilted path project, Threading Side by Side.
SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION AT CVAG | January 11 – 28, 2023
VIRTUAL SCREENING | January 11 – April 1, 2023
Credits:
Participants — Cleo Butcher, Valery Arthur, Angela Somerset, Renée Poisson Cathy Coates, Lydia Karpenko, Zoe Klassen-Somerset, Bran Mackie, Erica Livsey, Keila Neufeld, SD71 Highland Secondary School – ENTER2 Program Cohort
Music — Guillaume Nagy
Quilted Path Creation — Marcelle Moisan, Nanaimo Community, Comox Valley Community
Facilitation, Camera, Edit, Voice, Soundscape — Geneviève Johnson
GENEVIÈVE JOHNSON | Threading Side by Side
digital + fibre installation and performance
I am investigating the human body and its embodied memory through live and on-screen exploration of movement triggered by words and the spectrum of images they imply.
Through an on-going process of transformation, I connect the body to the world by creating durational performances with nature outside and in, inviting differences and flaws into the creation of poems in motion. My practice is based in Butoh art in which the performance takes form through the unfolding of slow movements like a live-sculpture creation in process.
This embodied visual art practice connects audience-participants to themselves, their environment and others in the present moment while exploring parts of unknown within. It reveals their unique ways of being and interacting through witnessing the construction of their own Landscape Under Skin Theatre.
Fabric and fibers are tropes in my performance-installation practice. It connects my work to craft arts often put aside as lesser arts because done by female. It reveals my desire to highlight communities and people that are put aside in our society (e.g.: women, LGBTQ+, people with special need, suffering from mental illness or drug addictions…) and the inequities that this brings.
The quilted path project Threading Side by Side is a metaphor of how communities are made of diverse and different pieces connecting in their own unique ways, and it is through these connections that the whole can appear. Because the path can as well be worn as a second skin, it also becomes a reflection on the transformative potential of the body, its porousness to the world around.
— Geneviève Johnson
Invitation to the Community:
You are invited to attach your own knitted piece to the quilted path.
When you visit the gallery, take a journey along the threads by bringing a knitted or crocheted piece – of your own making or found – that you will attach to the quilted path
or leave on-site to be attached by the artist.
Create or select the piece with a thought, wish, or person in mind:
as if weaving your very personal meaningful story in it.
Leave a part of yourself with this art project as a metaphor of how community is made of diverse voices, connecting in unique ways to create strength.
This work by Geneviève Johnson is part of the OPEN ⋮ REALITY convergent program at the Comox Valley Art Gallery.
For more information about the projects and the artists in this program, visit:
Real Reality (RR) / Integrating Reality (STREAM Incubator)