Center SAGAMIE invites you to the opening of the exhibition of Caroline Fillion and Natascha Niederstrass on Friday, September 9 at 5 pm. This event will be held as part of the Création Duo Diffusion project and will be the first duo exhibition of a series of three, throughout the fall of 2022. This duo is presented in partnership with Occurrence art space.
The past year has been a remarkable period of changing expectations. The global situation has exacerbated a sense of division among the population. The ongoing threat from a pandemic era and a rapidly changing social and environmental climate have governed our actions and language.
It is in this context, and in this isolation that Caroline Fillion and Natascha Niederstrass have dedicated themselves to the production of new bodies of work. THE END is an exhibition that is named for the limitations that force them to reflect on what is essential in their work. At a time when technology and the global situation seem to be pushing us away from each other, art reminds us of the importance of connection and exchange with the other, because without this essential exchange and connection, art has no place. Art is exchange. It requires a real interaction. An organic intimacy. When this proximity becomes difficult, art becomes all the more essential.
The exhibition THE END also inevitably marks a beginning and a renewal, where everything can be re-imagined following a fantasized apocalypse that reflects on our durability and our collective future. By creating series of works that speak and respond to each other, Fillion and Niederstrass propose a reflection on the place that these images and objects occupy in time and space. Their interventions invite viewers to consider these fragments that exist in a place between the future, the past and an alternative reality in the present.
Caroline Fillion
Caroline Fillion is a multidisciplinary artist from Saguenay. Her conceptual practice is based on symbolic conjunctions or metaphors that question, divert or transgress the traditional postulates of the art world. A reflection tempered in a serious absurdity, on the methods of legitimization of Art through its institutions and on the relationship between the work, the artist and the commentary that precedes them.
She holds a master's degree in visual arts from the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, a graduate diploma in management of cultural organizations from HEC Montréal and a bachelor's degree in visual and media arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec and has participated in several regional, national and international exhibitions and residencies. Her works are part of several private and public collections, including those of Loto-Québec.
Natascha Niederstrass
Using video, photography and installation, Natascha Niederstrass' work is inspired in particular by art history, crime scenes and horror films in order to underline the ambiguity of signs and cultural codes that are accepted as truths and that turn out to be deceptive in relation to a reality that often escapes us.
A graduate of Concordia University in Montreal (BFA) and York University in Toronto (MFA), Natascha Niederstrass has presented several solo and group exhibitions in galleries and artist-run centers. Her work is included in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d'art de Joliette, the National Bank of Canada and the City of Longueuil. She completed a residency at VU Photo in Quebec City in June 2021 to develop a new body of work that is presented until April 2022 as part of the 10th edition of the Manif d'Art de Québec. In the winter of 2021, she did a research residency at Centre SAGAMIE in order to prepare an exhibition in collaboration with Saguenay artist Caroline Fillion. The project will then be presented at Occurrence - espace d'art et d'essai contemporains as well as at Centre SAGAMIE. She also recently participated in a group exhibition at Atelier Presse Papier in Trois-Rivières which presented her first artist's book published by Les Éditions Rodrigol.
