Artist Bio
Amélie makes art as one would enter a process of transformative grief. Her work is an ode to the wonders we’ve lost in the course of the capitalocene-anthropocene and beyond. She is a member of the Textile and Materiality Research Cluster from Milieux Institute and a MFA candidate at Concordia University. She is the co-founder of the STAIN lab, an innovative educational project aiming to promote sustainable art practices.
Project Statement
Même les choses belles portent les parures de la violence. Bronze, copper oxide crystal formation, hemp bast fibres, extracted carminic acid from cochineal, dried and pulverized into pigments, acetic acid solution 5% with salt, various dimensions, 2021
“I am thinking about the weight of our vices that allowed for the glaring outbreak of a thousands new eternal diseases
Of landscapes of desolation
I am thinking about the map; the act of naming that disenchanted the forests
I am thinking of the mind map as a metaphor for the violence of the quest for knowledge and control and accumulation
I am thinking of the failure of science, it never allowed for equality to happen
I am thinking of defences mechanisms
that in the colour pink there is carminic acid
and that this acid comes from female cochineal and that they produce it to protect herselves from their aggressor
I think about cochineal dyestuff and how it was at the center of colonial commerce in what is known now as Mexico and how it was cultivated by Aztecs, Mixtecs and Zapotecs peoples before the Spanish came and created a monopoly for cochineal dyestuff. I think about how Indigenous peoples across the world were violently extracted from the land itself to become commodity to the great empires.
I think about hemp paper and how it was dyed with cochineal and how it became itself in this installation a recipient for these histories to be told
I think about hemp and how it can participate -when used in phytoremediation- in restoring soil that were decimated by radioactive catastrophes. How it could be used to restore Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The glaring outbreak of eternal diseases.
I think about the copper oxyde that the hemp paper hold within its fibres, in a similar way it can retain radioactivity. I am thinking about how copper is a trace element and that it’s oxyde is used as a biocide. I am thinking about bronze that is composed mainly in copper. How it was used to eternally commemorate the most horrible of humanity; John A. Mac Donald is only one of many. I think about how copper oxyde grows on the surface of bronze to preserve the integrity of its surface in the face of the aggressions of salt, acid and oxygen.
I am thinking a lot about protection
I am wondering what do the protective mechanisms of metals, plants or insects look like?
What are the physical manifestations of their protection and what do they defend against?
What is it about the violent cycle of aggression that forces protection?
How can we feel safe in an era of unprecedented environmental catastrophes, multiplication of human conflicts and intolerance, hatred and fear ?
How can anything be beautiful now ?
This project aim to question the role of beauty in a context of aggression
I find consoling grace in the edification of fragiles and impermanent ecosystems of interactions”