November 30, 2014 - February 8, 2015,

Salle Alfred-Pellan, Maison des arts, Laval QC.

Curatorial Statement:

A house is a ‘psychic state’: the place we call home is a physical space but also an emotional one, shaped in our imagination by an accumulation of personal memories and family stories. In Broken Land: Stories told and retold, Lalie Douglas invents a world both familiar and uncanny, where domestic and natural environments collide in a metaphoric expression of impending doom.

            Upon first glance, everything seems perfect: we find a constellation of theatrically lit, curiously austere scenes―pristine white house models, in various sizes but otherwise identical, are positioned on pieces of equally white children’s household furniture which sit on low white platforms. Surrounding the gallery, a curved black wall portrays the night sky, whose faux celestial imagery echoes the constellation of surreal domesticity on the gallery floor. Yet a strange, unsettling dissonance pervades these interior and exterior worlds.

             A house maquette is a utopian visualization, a miniature version of an ideal home. But what about these silent, empty houses? Is this a dream home, a happy home? The only clue that these doll-like houses are not so idyllic comes from a number of viewfinders placed around the platforms and aimed at the maquettes. Peering through the lenses, we see that these tidy little houses contain emotional universes in disarray. In a kind of Shakespearean pathetic fallacy, where natural events symbolize inner feelings, Douglas’ installation presents the threat of stormy weather, floods and other ominous ecological situations to suggest a human world out of control. The viewfinders overlay landscapes, disastrous and otherwise, from the outside world onto the house’s interior, each private, fixed viewpoint inviting viewers to create their own narratives to explain what might be going on in the house.

However calamitous and unnatural, the conflation of outside and inside in Broken Land is not dystopian but rather heterotopian; it is an ambiguous space of otherness, at once physical and mental, which opens up the possibility of multiple readings and multiple meanings. Just as the same house is presented at different scales, the same fairy tale, or family myth, often exists in different versions, depending upon who is telling the tale. It is precisely the absence of any depiction of humans which directly implicates the viewer, allowing us to encounter the work as active subjects and engage in creating multiple sets of stories.

            With a visual vocabulary that moves fluidly between 2D and 3D – drawing, etching and stop-animation to scale models, mould-making and casting – the artist displays a versatility and material prowess that distinguishes her creative practice. The choice of media for this installation allowed Douglas to create a distinction between the quiet solidity of the house elements and the ambiguous, ethereal natural of the animations. As in her previous work, a number of abiding themes recur in this exhibition: the use of the miniature as a metaphor for interiority; the notion of vague or unresolved narratives that activate our tendency to draw lines between two points in a constellation, that is, to draw relationships between elements to create a story; and ‘the power of the false’ to reveal the truth.

Barbara Wisnoski, curator

Feature 3

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