Huile sur panneau de bois marouflé à la colle de peau de lapin, 2015-2021
My interest inmeat as an art material started around 2013. I was completing a seminar on food in art when I discovered Johanne Lamoureux’s writing. I recall Mélanie Boucher, the lecturer, smiling when she found the term “meaty” (viandeux) in my essay because she noticed the influence of Lamoureux on my work. Years later, I am starting to realise how important this moment was for me. This is when I became an art historian by filiation.
In 2017, I was working at the Pavillon Alphonse-Desjardins’ gallery at Université Laval as an art handler and was in charge of Catherine McInnis exhibition “ L’odeur du sang humain me rit”. Catherine didn't know it then, but I had been waiting for this moment for a long time. I was longing for a chat on flesh and blood. I needed her to tell me everything about her painting techniques, tempera, rabbit skin glue and all the animal textures she used to recreate flesh. We talked a lot - while setting up the damn hanging wires since the gallery would not let us pierce the walls - about meat as an object of consumption and how similar it can be to the flesh of the female body.
In a few days, Catherine will be starting a degree in art history. I hope to experience a similar emotion to that of Mélanie Boucher when I read her first text. I am looking forward to finding a certain filiation between her thoughts and those of all the art historians who have butchered this meaty subject.
- Sevia Pellissier