ELISABETH PERRAULT | CES PETITES MORTS DOMESTIQUES

From April 29 to June 5, 2021.

Snakes shed their skin up to four times a year, to allow for both growth and protection. While common, there is something eerie and astounding that happens when a skin slips off. This biological but also symbolic process, evocative of the inevitability of transience, death, and renewal, informs several important feminist fibre-based practices, like those of Eva Hesse, Jana Sterbak and Kiki Smith, to name a few.

Following and enriching this lineage is the deeply sensitive and poetic practice of Montreal-based artist Elisabeth Perrault (b. 1996, Joliette, Canada). Her solo exhibition titled, Ces petites morts domestiques, like the moulting of snakes, speaks of the skin as a marker of memory and time, and as a carrier of experience.

Appearing at the surface of Perrault's life-size pieces - the mattress, the reclining body, and the awaiting skin - are dried up bouquets that she handpicked in the countryside and pressed last Summer. For Perrault, the repetitive motifs of the flowers are suggestive of monotony and solitude, sensations that can be so overwhelming they halt the body into inaction, where it becomes a tapestry, witnessing the passage of time.