Through his body of work and his individual pieces, Binet revisits how landscape is seen and understood. Using his expertise and specific processes, he modulates the observer’s view of his works and of the landscape around us. He also seeks to allow us to perceive the constructed dimension inherent to the many landscapes that are spread before our eyes as we walk.

Binet is a photographer who is interested in exploration and expeditions. As he walks, he surveys the territories from which he draws his images. He is attentive to the movements of shadows and light, variable luminosities, and the different colours of illumination. The movements of ice, water, earth, sediments, and other materials fascinate him. He captures the nuances and treasures of each place he visits, including the shores of the St. Lawrence River, landscapes in different regions of Québec, and the many watercourses and industrial and mining sites that he discovers.

Through the works presented in this exhibition, we can distinguish and appreciate Binet’s approach of cobbling together images and landscapes, an approach that has evolved over the years and according to the methods and technologies that become available. This process leads him to create new landscapes that are imaginary but possible, constructed from in situ “samplings.”

The exhibition offers a first overview of thirty years of Binet’s research and production. From his initial photographic experiments and explorations adopting a sculptural form to recent photographs related to the history of painting and environmental issues, the exhibition presents a panorama from the early works to today and includes his projects and works of public art.

The exhibition was produced by La Maison Hamel-Bruneau in the Sainte-Foy–Sillery–Cap-Rouge borough of Québec City. The curator is responsible for the exhibition’s tour.

Human zoos, popular in the late nineteenth century, were “ethnographic exhibitions,” places where racism was blatantly expressed and displaying a theatre of terrible cruelty: that of the supremacy of the white “race” and the “society of the spectacle” described by the essayist Guy Debord as a tool of propaganda, of the hold of capital over our lives, and of a social relationship between people mediatized by images. Social networks accentuate this exhibition of the self and of its capital. Through our screens, we decide to be part of a new human zoo.

Does this form of spectacle of the “self” serve to gain us social recognition? To generate a sense of belonging to a dominant group within a world standardized by digital media? What is hidden behind our screens? Behind the curtain of our individual theatres? In the backstage of our psyches and our lives, veiled by appearances and pretense? According to Freud, the development of science inflicted three successive narcissistic wounds on humanity: “Earth is not the centre of the universe” (Copernicus); “Humanity is the fruit of evolution” (Darwin); and a psychological wound: the discovery of the unconscious through psychoanalysis. Today, a fourth wound has been added, the Anthropocene, which compels humanity to reconcile with its environment, with other forms of life and other humans, no longer to subjugate but to collaborate.

The exhibition is divided into three sections: a retrospective, new works, and a participatory work that will be activated throughout the duration of the exhibition. This action by the public is intended to provoke a real encounter between two people, beyond the screen – to open the curtain and begin a sincere dialogue with the other and with oneself in order to undertake reconciliation.

Stanley Février lives and works in Longueuil; he has a degree in visual and media arts from UQAM. His conceptual practice is based on institutional critique, identity-related issues and violence, and the inequalities engendered by that violence.

Stanley Février

*Due to the exceptional situation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the 7^th edition of ORANGE, scheduled for 2021, has been postponed to summer 2022.

ORANGE 2022
SUMMER EDITION AND NEW PARTNERSHIP

For the 7^th edition of ORANGE, presented in summer 2022, Le Jardin Daniel A. Séguin is a major partner.
ORANGE will be presented from June 4 to September 22, 2022, doubling the event’s program period (14 weeks).
In collaboration with the artist-run centre Vrille | art actuel, the ORANGE triennial expands to La Pocatière and the Kamouraska region throughout the summer.

What do we want to learn from plants? How can gardens embody plural spaces of knowledge and transmission while revealing coherent ways of being in the world? Cultivating humility seeks to untangle a concept of the garden as a defined space of cultivation to better understand and transform the power dynamics that have been established between different life forms. This curatorial project is an invitation to identify and highlight the resistance of plants. This power cannot be reduced to any definitive form and is discerned namely through their slow growth, toxicity, regenerative ability, and fragility.

Woods, vacant lots, riverbanks, vegetable gardens, flower beds, and forests are just a few of the spaces where alternative gardening practices flourish and advocate for rethinking the scientific and museological methods used to classify and represent the living. A wide range of artistic and community initiatives have formed critical responses to the patriarchal and colonial concept of vegetation that permeates the Western history of plants. These initiatives reflect the diversity of world views and underline the affective, cultural, ritualistic, and curative dimensions of plants, while shedding light on the processes of erasure, dispossession, and exoticisation that colonialism has instilled. As we prepare for the next edition of ORANGE, our attention and energy will focus on recognizing this interdependent relationship and our responsibility in honouring these practices.

Artists will be invited to present their work in a variety of locations over the summer of 2021, including at EXPRESSION, at the Jardin Daniel A. Séguin in Saint-Hyacinthe, and in other sites throughout the county of Kamouraska.

Elise Anne LaPlante and Véronique Leblanc form the duo of curators for the next edition of ORANGE. Thanks to their respective professional careers and personal journeys, each is experienced with decentralized art events. Elise Anne is interested in feminist and queer approaches, and Véronique explores the links between art and politics. These perspectives are brought together in a shared concern for de-hierarchization of knowledge and attention to the circulation of discourses in the social space.

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Episode 2 of the ORANGE 2022 series produced by NousTV

Since time immemorial, Indigenous peoples have protected biodiversity in the face of continued human population growth. Since contact with settlers began, Indigenous communities have been stripped of their ancestral lands; the Land Back movement aims to restore governance and stewardship of the land for a sustainable future.

Land Back is a call to action, a return of equity to a stolen territory, but it also offers an important question: how can we best protect biodiversity, land, and water? The first step would be to return the land to its traditional and legitimate protectors. Returning to Indigenous knowledge goes beyond symbolic gestures of recognition or inclusion to significantly change practices and structures.

BACA, video of the exhibition Land back presented at EXPRESSION, 3 min 33 s. © NousTV