Corps habité

Curator: Daniel Fiset

The installation Corps habité by Geneviève Thibault is conceived first and foremost as a gift to the Ursulines de Québec, the artist's close collaborators since 2017. At that time, the congregation's departure for a seniors' residence in Beauport had been announced. Sensing an urgent need to document the places that had been home to the sisters for 375 years, Thibault contacted the Ursulines' Mother Superior to initiate a major documentary project combining photographic and sound recordings.

Four years later, after going through a period of growing social isolation for the elderly, Thibault got back in touch with the sisters to offer them a glimpse of the place where they had lived for centuries, allowing them to experience, via virtual reality headsets, a faithful reconstruction of their chapel.

While the artist's work enters into a dialogue with the photographic practices of social documentary produced in Quebec since the 1960s, or with the modes of inquiry of material studies, ethnology and social anthropology, it is also nourished by a renewed interest in the techniques of immersion in art - notably through the use of virtual reality, sound spatialization and the integration of vibratory elements within the exhibition device. Thibault's project comes to reflect the chapel of the former Ursuline Monastery as an immersive space of its own; a place organized according to spiritual principles embodied in its architecture and decoration, which the public accesses only through the reaction of the nuns who see it again, perhaps for the last time.