I live in a neighbourhood that is home to both seamstresses working in the remnants of Montreal’s textile industry and a community of artists who now occupy the empty spaces left behind by their disappearance. From them to me, from an endless repetition of gestures to a lonely esthetic act: the same walls, the same streets, the same geographical experience. Each of us, in our own parallel worlds, performs repetitive actions that have taken on a new meanings through the last century. The meaning of the gesture has shifted, creating and maintaining distinct visions of these parallel worlds.
As a woman artist, I am profoundly moved by this immeasurable distance, it sets my head a spin. The ground gives way under my feet. I can only keep on staring. Looking through this unbearable distance as if my gaze could make it disappear. I try to situate myself in this extreme distance and maybe, I hope, reach a place where we can meet, where there is something of them that comes through what I thought I was until that very moment.
7 am. From the 12th floor, I look through the window. Montreal lies before my eyes. Closer, the wind skims the surface of forgotten puddles on top of the building I am staring at. Closer again, the same three women facing their sewing machine. I can’t take my eyes off them.
5 pm. Them, again. Always, them. Always the same position. The neon lights have just been lit.
3 color photographs, 91,4 by 21,9 cm.