Myriam Jacob-Allard
T’envoler

From February 7 to April 5, 2019
Opening on February 7 at 7 pm

Book launch on March 2, 2019

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

Originally from Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Myriam Jacob-Allard is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with performance, video, craft and installation. She holds an MFA in Visual and Media Arts from UQAM and lives in Montreal. Her practice focuses on Quebecois pop culture, particularly on country-western culture, which occupies an important place in her maternal family. Drawing on collected testimonials and stories as well as country-western iconography, songs and myths, Myriam Jacob-Allard’s work reflects on the maternal figure, matrilineal transmission, memory and forgetfulness.

Her work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions as well as in festivals across Canada, Europe and South America. Recent exhibitions include Once Upon a Time… The Western: A New Frontier in Art and Film at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (2017-2018), The Grand Balcony at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in the context of the Biennale de Montréal (2016-2017), and Ne pas mourir at Le LOBE (Chicoutimi, 2017). L’Œil de poisson (Quebec) will be presenting another of the artist’s works in the spring of 2019. The recipient of many grants and awards, in 2015 Myriam Jacob-Allard was awarded the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art.