Jennifer Campbell and Thomas Kneubühler

From January 2014 to October 2015

As a foretaste of the long-awaited inaugural exhibition to celebrate the opening of our new space at 5455 de Gaspé, Dazibao satellite presents two monumental works in the city. On the sign boards of the Café Cherrier and the Bonsecours Market, which have already been the site of works by David Tomas and Manon De Pauw, you will have the pleasure of discovering Jennifer Campbell’s String House and Thomas Kneubühler’s Trading Post. These two works, created for the occasion, form the first part of the exhibition, video program and publication Home Sweet Home. À propos de l’inquiétude, which will mark Dazibao’s return.

Jennifer Campbell

Jennifer Campbell creates performances for the video camera which explore transformation and mutation processes of her body and diverse objects. Often bringing the body and objects together in an unusual manner, she constructs images which decontextualise both body and object. In this Surrealist universe, seemingly playful permutations create a persistent psychological atmosphere and tension. Campbell sets her sights on limits: the limits of her body’s endurance and the limits of perceptive receptivity, of our capacity to modulate reality. String House, a monumental image installed in the city on the façade of a café, has been specially created for the exhibition Home Sweet Home. À propos de l’inquiétude. Against a black background, two hands stretched forward – like an extension of our own arms – form the silhouette of a fragile house through the delicate manipulation of string in a way reminiscent of a child’s game.

Jennifer Campbell was born in Vancouver and lives and works in Seattle, Washington. She holds a master’s degree in photography from Concordia University. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Dazibao (Montreal), West Space (Australia), AXENÉO7 (Gatineau), Gallery4Culture (Seattle) and Galerie B-312 (Montreal) and been seen in numerous group exhibitions and festivals, including Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination at the Jack Shainman Gallery (New York), LIVE Biennale (Vancouver), Through Future Eyes: Endurance of Humanity at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), the Northwest Film & Video Festival (Portland, Oregon, 2010), where she received the Jury Award, the Reel Canadian Film Festival (Fernie, British Colombia, 2011), the Festival Miden (Athens, 2012) and the Traverse Vidéo festival (Toulouse, 2013).

Thomas Kneubühler

Thomas Kneubühler’s work deals with social questions, the impact of technology on the way we function and the ambivalent nature of the structures of modern life. His images are located in the border zone between public and private and between access and intrusion. Trading Post is a monumental image of a tipi installed on the façade of an old public market in Montreal built on a site dating back to the French colony. The image was taken on the site of what was, long ago, a trading post operated by the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort George Island in James Bay. With this work, Kneubühler underscores the fact that the consequences of trade and progress are not always positive and that notions of territory and belonging are often eradicated by them. The Cree of Fort George Island were relocated to enable the construction of hydroelectric stations, just as the First Nations peoples were evicted with the arrival of the settlers.

Thomas Kneubühler was born in Switzerland and has lived in Montreal since 2000. His work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions in Canada at venues such as Gallery 44 (Toronto), VU, centre de diffusion et de production de la photographie (Quebec City), PLATFORM Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts (Winnipeg), Latitude 53 (Edmonton) and AXENÉO7 (Gatineau) and has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Contemporary Art Montréal at the Shanghai World’s Fair (2010), The Work Ahead of Us – The Québec Triennial at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2011), Au milieu de nulle part at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris (2012-13) and the upcoming exhibition Field Work at OSLO 8 contemporary photography (Basel, 2015). He received the Conseil des arts de Montréal Pratt & Whitney Canada award in 2011.