Oxford Brookes University (UK)
ART & SCIENCE Vs. CONFLICT IN THE GLOBAL PRESENT
11.02.2016
REGISTER BEFORE
07 / 02 / 2016
CHRISTINE BRAULT Independent Artist
Christine Brault lives and works in Montreal, Canada. As an interdisciplinary artist, relating to a variety of contexts, she creates performative actions and site-specific interventions with a poetic, engaged and feminist angle. Her recent actions mostly relate to the feminicide problematic in the Americas, from North to South. Granted from the Canada Arts Council, the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec, and Engrenage Noir, her work has brought her to participate in various international performance festivals and artist residencies in many countries of the Americas, in China and in Europe.
Therefore, in the continuity of my investigations on this feminicide problematic focusing on the Americas, I propose to do a talk/performance using poppy petals, a wild flower originated from England then seeded in Canada, is now used as a remembrance emblem for veteran Canadian soldiers. Beforehand, on each petal I will write the names of these 1186 women, leaving some unwritten for those who have not yet been identified.
The poppy may also be perceived as a symbol of colonialism. To reappropriate this symbol for our aboriginal women, tend to somewhat “repair” what has been done".
Photography: Project El Abrigo de María Teresa / Maria Teresa's Coat, tribute to disappeared women following the September 11th 1973 coup in Chile. Photo: Eduardo Bustillos
"An insidious gender war"
"My art practice characterizes itself through embodied performance as to voice women’s histories (Chile, Mexico, Canada), to denounce in a poetic manner as to seek justice, using my own performer’s body as a canal or container to absorb then relate, to keep alive the memory of too many girls and women, either disappeared or dead. A few years ago, during a recent artist residency in Mexico, I realized how severe and omnipresent the feminicide problematic was in that country.
Investigating more profoundly, I see that those atrocities are spread worldwide, from east to west, from north to south; that the killing of girls and women has been going on for decades including my own country, Canada, where over 4000 aboriginal women have either disappeared or been found assassinated, over the last 30 years. Of those 4000, only 1186 have been declared as such, many have not been identified.