[Isolé-e-s]

Interior and introspection, daily life and confinement, matter and boundaries; the pandemic as a product, a symptom and, a mirror of a deeper crisis in our collectiverepresentations and ways of being in the world: with [Isolé.e.s], I found styrofoam as an ideal material to shape these reflections and intuitive sensations. Styrofoam is everywhere yet remains invisible. It usually serves to insulate our homes, acting as a hypodermis aliminal, invisible layer between the inside and outside, the envelope to our interiors that have been and continue to be the theater of our isolation, while also the protective insulation from the harshness outside. An extremely polluting material, it embodies the concept of pharmakon—a remedy that also serves as poison—the symbol of comfort whose waste will ultimately suffocate us.

Staying true to the method I adopted as a nurturing practice during the pandemic, these pieces of styrofoam are the result of being reused twice: initially gathered from construction sites in Montreal, they were used in my artistic practice, and the elements in this work are, at their end of life, the residual remains of their initial transformation. These residues, even the tiniest bits of this usually invisible material, become art. Scoria, leftovers, residues, waste: we understand the foundations of a society by how it manages the "evacuation of waste" (J. Lacan). To represent daily life, to represent our world, is it not to show it in its void, through what we ignore and discard? It is through the iterative process of re-presentation—this subjective transformation of the present, which goes far beyond the mere description—that art serves as a revealing lens for our accepted practices and unconscious assumptions.

Written by Valentin Bec