Main Gallery
Le e dans l’o de mon cœur / When (i) draw my own lines—performing the substrate.
Pascaline Knight
October 18, 2019 – November 16, 2019
Pascaline Knight uses screenprinting, performance and installation to examine and reveal the interstices of being. This exhibition is the culmination of her master thesis research: When ( i ) stand for the w(hole)/ je maintiens mon être entre deux parenthèses embrassées—performing the substrate. During this research, she operated from the red margin to find, appreciate and claim her own voice.
The emblematic Cahier Canada notebook is used in primary school to learn to write. Here, it becomes a highly specific open space to analyze the effect its syntax has on our subconscious mind. By extracting it from its original purpose, and playing with its scale and format, the uncanny emerges. Considering the notebook in this manner leads to questions of history, location, technology and power. The red margin and the blue lines become an asemic (wordless open semantic form of writing) exercise pointing to the process of emerging ideas, words forming, choices being made.
The performances in this exhibition are a process of disambiguation of the personal pronoun ( i ). Early on, through language, Knight became acutely aware that much of who she is (and is becoming), didn’t correspond to the identity placed on her, which was set in patriarchal terms. By drawing her own lines, she explores her agency over her evolving identities. In doing this, Knight is drawing a portrait of interiority, the act of thinking, the evanescent transforming idea of the present tense. She addresses the gap between the fixing and flowing that occurs within language and writing.
Note: Pascaline Knight will be activating the installation through performance on the following dates: October 23rd, 30th and November 6th between 2:00 – 3:00 pm.
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Pascaline Knight is a transdisciplinary artist originally from Montreal. She holds a Studio Arts Bachelor from Concordia University (1996). In 2015 she moved to Toronto and obtained her MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Art and Design at OCAD University (2017). She has exhibited extensively, nationally and internationally, participating in self-publishing art book fairs such as Tirage Limité in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Toronto Art Book Fair in Toronto, 2017. More recently, she made an installation and performance at Galerie du Nouvel, Ontario. She was awarded a research residency grant from the CALQ in Basel Switzerland (March-July 2019). She received support from CAC for her residency at Agalab in Amsterdam, Holland (2018) as well as for her upcoming residency at Kala Arts Institute in Berkeley, California (2020). This fall, she is activating the collection of Artexte in Montreal, QC, as the result of a micro-residency: ICC: Invisible Carbon Copy, bringing the moon inside. Her books can be consulted at the Thomas Fisher rare book library, The York University library in Toronto, the BANQ in Quebec, and the Musée Cantonal de Lausanne in Switzerland.