T’envoler
2019 | Dazibao
It is at the crossroads of personal history and collective memory that Myriam Jacob-Allard’s work lingers. These take form in the exhibition around two narratives: a popular song and a family story. The title of the exhibition, T’envoler, is borrowed from a country song, a musical genre with a particular resonance for the artist’s family. Country music, at times described as “white people’s blues”, has the same visceral quality, that impulse to be close, in simple terms, to everyday life and feelings. Moreover, the lovelorn refrain in one of the principal works of the exhibition is sung by Jacob-Allard, her mother and her sister. The artist places beside this song a story which, because of its persistance, is part of the family lore. This story, told countless times by her grandmother, is an implausible tale of the time a hurricane worthy of The Wizard of Oz, when she was a child, picked her up and sent her flying. Present in each of these stories, the idea of flying away – or of sending someone flying (t’envoler) – invests Jacob-Allard’s piece with a strange duality: at once murky and light-hearted, the sign of freedom and attachment, of belonging and flight, it is the duality of fear of the unknown and the reassuring familiar. Under the surface, a private story’s potential for universality can be seen taking shape, but also, as a sign of the times at this moment of great uniformity, the deep desire to reconnect with – or even to invent – a unique story all one’s own.
— FC
For their support in the making of this project, the artist would like to thank: Alice Gervais, Claire Jacob, Émilie Jacob-Allard, Denis Allard, Simon Plouffe, Nicholas Larouche, Paul Daraîche, the Dazibao team, Bruno Bélanger, Sylvain Cossette, Lucette Jacob, Olya Zarapina, Joanne Lessard, Alain Omer Duranceau, Jean-Philippe Thibault, Louis-Philippe Côté, la Société d’histoire du patrimoine de La Sarre, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, PRIM centre, the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art.
Song and title of the exhibition T’envoler : Paul Daraîche
Credit : Paul Daraîche. (1984). T’envoler. Dans T’envoler [CD]. Québec : CPM Distribution
Photos credits: Marilou Crispin et Guy L’Heureux