As explained at the time, the first
ORANGE: Contemporary Art Event of Saint-Hyacinthe was chiefly inspired by the fact that agriculture and food processing constitute one of the region's largest industries. The city of Saint-Hyacinthe is an agri-food technopolis, notable for the myriad farms bordering its territory, and for the research and teaching institutions that make the area a leading reference in the agricultural sector.
ORANGE is back in 2006, once again a major artistic event but this time with a new theme:
COMO COMO.
Today, more than ever, food-related concerns are fuelled by the social climate. People are no longer content just to know what they're eating; they want the full background on their table fare. COMO COMO (meaning "how I eat" in Spanish) stems directly from these considerations. From field to fork, with stops for production, transformation, marketing and retailing, every step calls for scrutiny. We want to know, and rightly so, whether the products we buy are organic and the result of fair trade, how they have been processed, if they contain transgenic materials, saturated fats or substitutes, whether the fish is tainted by mercury, whether the chicken is grain-fed, whether each product supplies sufficient Omega 3, vitamins, proteins, and so on.
Starting from the issues surrounding the agri-food chain, ORANGE ventures along the many paths of this vast universe. It explores humans' relationship to nature, attesting the increasingly fragile balance between contemporary society's behaviour and the various ecosystems. The event also looks at the relations between individuals, groups and cultures.
ORANGE 2006 brings together 15 artists working from the new realities that shape the multiple realms of food and its production. Because there is no one reading of this important aspect of our lives, the artists propose their respective observations, questions and aspirations through COMO COMO, a common, universal and ever-timely theme.
ORANGE thus functions as a think tank, using exhibitions, interventions and seminars to lead people to reflect on and discuss present-day art and agri-food matters. Although ORANGE is defined as a recurring event, there is no risk of it becoming redundant, since each edition features different artists evolving in an ever-changing world. Many of them present previously unexhibited material or works produced in residence, so the unknown plays an important part in the collective exploration, even for us, the curators. And that's the way we like it. It's like preparing a meal without hard-and-fast recipes.
Eve-Lyne Beaudry, Marcel Blouin, Catherine Nadon, Myriam Tétreault
Curators, ORANGE: Contemporary Art Event of Saint-Hyacinthe, 2nd edition
