The Spider, the Monster, the Mother, and the Homemaking Queen

By
Valérie Tremblay Blouin

A THESIS ESSAY SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF APPLIED ARTS in
Visual Arts

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN

2015

© Valérie Tremblay Blouin, 2015

Abstract
This thesis essay is an account of an auto-ethnographic research about how personal identity is
formed, performed and represented. Its structure is experimental and it uses various and
overlapping discursive strategies to engage the reader. It is informed by affect, queer and
feminist theory, especially the writings of Judith Jack Halberstam on failure. It also draws from
conceptions of identity encountered in postcolonial theory, critical pedagogy, girl studies and fat
studies. I look into my working method through an examination of material and immaterial
works. Playful artistic gestures, improvisation and messy installations are envisioned as acts of
casual rebellion, or transgressive ways of making that deliberately register my work outside of
the mainstream. I introduce several recent projects and contextualize them by means of
storytelling. I also address my interest in attraction and repulsion, personal history and
hierarchies of value.

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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Diyan Achjadi, whose advice,
support and commitment has been a blessing. I would also like to thank my sponsor Jacques
Marchand, without whom I wouldn’t have had the means to pursue my dream. My warm
gratitude goes to my family, especially my partner Dominic whose patience is endless. I am
grateful to my sibling MMP who helped me with the translation of some of the quotes and
proofread my paper many times. I would also like to thank Dr. Chris Jones and Dr. Kimberly
Phillips for their enthusiasm and their wisdom.

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Dedication

For Agathe

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Table of Contents
Abstract ...................................................................................................ii
Acknowledgements ................................................................................iii
Dedication ...............................................................................................iv
Table of Contents ...................................................................................v
List of Figures .........................................................................................vi
Foreword .................................................................................................1
Introduction ............................................................................................3
1. Dematerialization ................................................................................6
Feeding sugar to spiders .....................................................................6
J’ai fait ça pour rien ...........................................................................10
2. Incarnation ........................................................................................13
Food Experiments .............................................................................13
Cake Queen ......................................................................................19
3. Reincarnation ...................................................................................21
Inside/Under ......................................................................................21
Still Life ..............................................................................................23
Downstairs .........................................................................................26
Conclusion ............................................................................................35
Endnotes ...............................................................................................38
Bibliography ..........................................................................................41

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List of Figures
Fig.1: Spiders, 2015 ...................................................................................................................8
Fig.2: J’ai fait ça pour rien, 2015 ................................................................................................11
Fig.3: Ruining the Whipped Cream, 2015 ..................................................................................13
Fig.4: Baloney Sandwich, 2014 ..................................................................................................15
Fig.5: Parfaits, 2014....................................................................................................................17
Fig.6: Food Experiments, 2014 ..................................................................................................18
Fig.7: Nadège Grebmeier Forget, Just Looking, 2013 ...............................................................19
Fig.8: Cake Queen, 2015 ............................................................................................................20
Fig.9: Inside/Under, 2013 ...........................................................................................................21
Fig.10: High Theory Comix: Kristeva, 2015 ................................................................................22
Fig.11: MMP, Cray Cray, 2015 ....................................................................................................23
Fig.12: MMP, Lake, 2015 ............................................................................................................24
Fig.13: Still Life, 2013 .................................................................................................................25
Fig.14: Downstairs (detail), 2015 ................................................................................................27
Fig.15: Downstairs (detail), 2015 ................................................................................................27
Fig.16: Claudie Gagnon, Les Queues de comète, 2013. Mixed Media…………..………………28
Fig.17: Homemaking, 2015 .......................................................................................................31
Fig.18: Homemaking, 2015 .......................................................................................................32
Fig.19: Homemaking, 2015 .......................................................................................................33
Fig.20: Homemaking, 2015 .......................................................................................................34

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Foreword
This thesis paper presents the results of two years of practice-based research that
investigated aspects of personal identity through an autobiographical perspective. My research
questions were the following: what narratives, images, affects and sensations contribute to shaping
my sense of self? How do I enact the characters and the stories that I tell myself about myself on a
daily basis? Why do I feel a gap between my own experience of femalehood and the
representations of gender that are reflected back at me? By making, thinking and writing, I have
recorded and analyzed my own experience of a transforming self, which enriched my
understanding of how personal identity is formed, performed and represented. The body of work
produced over the course of this process is heterogeneous. My practice shifted back and forth from
material-based making to performative, ephemeral and furtive interventions. I used a great diversity
of media, from traditional pastels, paints and inks to mouldy food and installations made of
scavenged cardboard. At a glance, it seems that all of these projects have very little in common.
The thread that links the work together is the autobiographical narrative from which they stem.
For the thesis paper to reflect that diversity, I used a variety of approaches to writing. The
introduction is written in the third person, to create an exaggerated sense of distance from the
subject. In contrast, the rest of the paper uses an informal and more personal tone, and is written in
the first person. Writing an academic paper with an alternative approach is becoming more
common, and a growing number of graduate students include graphic novel components in their
thesis dissertation. For instance, Johanne Hui at Concordia University, or Nick Sousannis at
Columbia University who wrote his entire doctoral dissertation as a graphic novel.
My research method starts with the improvisation of working situations, gathering materials
found in the immediate environment and experimenting with ways of making, both familiar, or in
which I’m skilled, (such as drawing or arranging) or not (cooking, knitting, taking pictures). Then, I
retrospectively think about the outcome of that work session to see if it is relevant to my research,
that is, if it provided new knowledge that could contribute to answering my research questions. This
knowledge is intuitive, it presents itself mostly under the shape of narratives that it brings up, and
affects that are attached to it. These narratives are then put on paper and connected with other
ideas: readings, work of other artists, theories from other fields. Among these, I found the most
kinship in what is known as queer affect studies. The writings of Sarah Ahmed, Lauren Berlant,
Judith Jack Halberstam and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick opened new and critical ways of thinking that
take into consideration personal experience and emotions. While I prefer Sedgwick’s definition of
affect as “the primary innate biological motivating mechanism, more urgent than drive deprivation

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and pleasure, and more urgent than physical pain1”, in the thesis essay this word is used in a
broader sense, one that also encompasses feelings and emotions.
In the Queer Art of Failure, Halberstam writes: “Under certain circumstances failing, losing,
forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more
cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world2.” In this paper, I use the word failure to
describe situations, behaviours and objects that don’t fit or fulfill what they are expected to. They
do not meet the expectations based on social standards, they miss the target. I especially relate to
the notion of gender failure, described by Halberstam as a potent situation of ambiguity: “Where
feminine success is always measured by male standards and gender failure often means being
relieved of the pressure to measure up to patriarchal ideals, not succeeding at womanhood can
offer unexpected pleasures3.” Not succeeding at being defined by other people’s expectations
means that we have to define ourselves, and that project is both empowering and terrifying. After
assessing my inability to perform my gender on society’s terms, I can reinvent myself completely
through my work. The projects presented in the thesis essay tell stories of failure: they are unglorious, un-monumental, the antithesis of classical architecture — perishable, uneven,
asymmetrical, small, delicate, fragile, and mutable. This character of impermanence is what makes
them stir: they are reminiscent of human fragility, of the inevitability of change, decay, death.
The heterogeneous character of my practice comes from a few different factors, however
the most relevant explanation comes from the fact that it is rooted in improvisation and
experimentation. I find that using elements from the environment in which I work is a playful and
fruitful constraint. When playing a game, we set a goal and find our way toward this goal by
composing with constraints and by following rules. In my research-practice, my goal was to
produce works that could be interpreted in a way that informs my thinking about identity, and
especially about how I perceive and present myself, as a woman and as an artist. During the two
years of my research, the constraints that I experienced were related to the lack of an organized
structure to produce my work: the lack of time, the lack of space and the lack of immediate
availability of specific materials. I experienced this absence of strict guidelines as an excess of
freedom, and this absolute liberty drove my creative process and pushed me to come up with new
works in an almost obsessive way. This way of making resulted in visually heterogeneous body of
work, ranging from furtive interventions in the public space to domestic installations, food
experiments and video-performances, as well as autobiographical comics. The making of the art is
so much embedded in my daily life that it is has become infused with its complexity.

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Introduction
This thesis essay examines the artistic practice of Valérie Tremblay Blouin. It
investigates the gaps and bridges between her sense of self (personal identity or ipséité4) and
the representations of that self. To articulate these two ideas, she conducts an autoethnographic research that consists of art making by means of trial, play and improvisation, as
well as writing about that process and the personal memories it brings up. It is also an attempt
at taking an inventory of what constitutes her personal identity: narratives, images, affects and
sensations.
Autoethnography is a form of research that was first talked about in the 70s. It differs
from autobiography in that “Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks
to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural
experience5.” while an autobiography is a self-written account of someone’s life. In the case of
Tremblay Blouin, the research focuses on the experiences of gender identity formation by
examining the mechanisms of transmission in a Québécois middle-class family with a strong
Catholic past, as well as by assessing the embodied experience of maternity and the
association with traditional femininity that it causes.
This essay itself is a self-representation: it is written in the first person and is
autobiographical. It alternates between interior-monologue fragments that record and
contextualize her artistic practice, and comics that showcase some of the narratives that are
brought up in the process. However, it is not only a self-reflection: it is an imagined
conversation, an attempt at reaching another like-minded being. Throughout the essay, the
artist speaks to that imaginary reader using an informal and sometimes confessional voice, in
order to convey a feeling of closeness and intimacy. This rather colloquial way of writing a
thesis is unorthodox and is informed by queer theory and affect theory. Scholars Donna
Haraway and Judith Jack Halberstam provide a theoretical framework that advocates
subjectivity and affect as empowering tools to challenge hegemonic, discriminatory views in
academia. The artist is especially indebted to Halberstam whose ideas of low theory and the
silly archive allowed her to reference personal history and pop culture alongside literature and
French philosophy. In The Queer Art of Failure, Halberstam describes low theory “… as a mode
of accessibility, but we might also think about it as a kind of theoretical model that flies below
the radar, that is assembled from eccentric texts and examples and that refuses to confirm the
hierarchies of knowing that maintain the high in high theory.6” Tremblay Blouin’s research
material is drawn from personal experience and memories, from the narratives that were

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passed on to her by family, from pop culture and social media platforms, as well as from
poetry, and autobiographical graphic novels.
Indeed, the artist’s work is informed by feminist comix artists such as Julie Doucet,
Lynda Barry and Aline Kominsky-Crumb. Like them, Tremblay Blouin chooses to disclose
intimate details of her life, and to represent herself in a non-idealized way. The three-eyed
monster depicted in the comix sections is intended to personify a third state outside the binary
notion of prettiness and ugliness. By representing herself in that way, the author wishes to
indicate her rejection of the cult of beauty as well as a refusal to be determined by the gaze of
others. It also translates well her feeling of not fitting in — of being a freak.
Autobiographical writing has been essential in the shaping of Québécois identity, and
especially among women. Authors with voices as diverse as Claire Martin, Gabrielle Roy,
Denise Bombardier, Julie Doucet, and Nelly Arcand have all written about themselves in what is
regarded as an empowering revisitation of past experiences. In De Marie de l’Incarnation à
Nelly Arcan, Patricia Smart writes about the importance of an intimate writing in the
development and affirmation of Québécoise women’s identity. In this thesis essay, Tremblay
Blouin also uses intimate autobiographical writing as the source material and an
autoethnographic methodology to survey the different theories, ideas, images, affects and
narratives that inform her work. What is brought up through this process is an impressionist
collage of self-reflections, a patchwork of stories, descriptions, critical thinking and
contextualization that allow the reader to taste the essence of her work. In Hold It Against Me,
Jennifer Doyle argues, “Because emotion itself has been associated in art criticism with a selfindulgent and naïve practice, it has been absorbed into the category of things one ought not
take seriously. The serious art critic steers clear of anything resembling “a private history, a
personal history. 7” Tremblay Blouin believes, like Judith Jack Halberstam affirms, that “Terms
like serious and rigorous tend to be code words, in academia as well as other contexts, for
disciplinary correctness; they signal a form of training and learning that confirms what is
already known according to approved methods of knowing, but they do not allow for visionary
insights or flights of fancy. 8” In both her writing and her work, Tremblay Blouin values affect,
playfulness and humour as forces and strategies that disrupt the precedence of seriousness. In
an equally political effort to counterbalance the tendency to favour male artists in theoretical
discourse, she contextualizes her work by referencing almost exclusively female artists and
writers.

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In the first chapter, the artist writes about two projects: Feeding Sugar to Spiders, a
furtive gesture, and the ongoing process piece J’ai fait ça pour rien, which explores the feelings
related to the experience of public, useless crafting and the accumulation of material that
results. She introduces the concept of informal rebellion. This idea consists of small, barely
noticeable and seemingly innocent gestures that defy common sense. They are microtransgressions: although far from radical actions, they have the similar aim to resist control.
The work of Nina Katchadourian is presented as an example of similar, playful and furtive
interventions in nature. The ongoing process piece J’ai fait ça pour rien explores the feelings
related to the experience of public, useless crafting and the accumulation of material that
results.
The second chapter is a presentation of the Food Experiments, a series rooted in
reflections about food and that explores how the gestures of eating, cooking and feeding are
intricately tied with feelings of desire, pleasure, disgust, and shame. It is informed by affect
theory, psychology and food studies theory. The performative work of Nadège Grebmeier
Forget and the banquets of Claudie Gagnon are put in parallel with the work. It also discusses
the video-performance Cake Queen and reflects upon the relationship between feminine
identity, body image and domestic labour, as well as the transmission of values and narratives
from mother to daughter.
The third chapter describes the installation called Downstairs and contextualizes it
within a recollection of memories related to religion, national identity and familial history. It
investigates the feelings of attraction and repulsion. The work of Claudie Gagnon is referred to
again, this time to highlight the influence of her commonalities with Tremblay Blouin, including
an interest for the domestic, a propensity to use found material in accumulation, as well as a
background in scenography. It also discusses the work presented during the thesis exhibition,
the installation Homemaking.
Tremblay Blouin concludes this thesis essay with a letter to Monique Régimbald-Zeiber,
a feminist artist and a former teacher. In this letter, she reintroduces her methodology,
preoccupations and theoretical framework, and furthers the contextualization of her practice.

5

1. Dematerialization
Feeding sugar to spiders
The things that bother me the most on a daily basis are the expectations and
assumptions people have or make based on the fact that I am a woman. This ordinary sexism
that plagues the society I live in has upset me since childhood. Growing up as a girl and raising
my daughter have confronted me with the popular opinion that there is one right way to be
female. If you fail to internalize this model, to reproduce the prescribed behaviour and comply
to the rules, your fate is to elicit contempt and experience shame. Many of these criteria are
still based on Catholic ideology. First of all, there is this contemptuous idea that you are put in
this world to be a man’s partner and to bear his children. You should never show signs of
masculinity yourself. The ideal woman is completely disincarnated, and therefore efforts should
be put into erasing all signs of desire, of appetite, into concealing signs of animality (hair), of
aging, of disease, of disability or malfunction. For the generation of my grandmother, this also
meant that your presence in the world should be as small and silent as possible. Ideally, you
shouldn’t be noticed at all. If you insist on making something, it should be useful (like clothes)
or decorative (embroidering a cushion), so as to not draw attention to yourself but rather
improve what is already there. For the generation of my mother, second-wave feminism
thought – very strong in Quebec in the seventies – brought expectations of professional
success and personal accomplishment. Those criteria still apply today, especially among the
people of the church of Lulu Lemon and the likes: to be a good woman you should be happy,
confident and strong. I don’t want to simply obey, and I don’t see the point in taking up the
thousands of little gestures that it requires to be nice, be pretty, be thin (or apologetic), make
everyone feel comfortable (but myself), be grateful for unsolicited compliments/advice/sexual
allusions (or worse), keep a clean house, feed everyone (but myself) and shut up.
I was acquainted with feminist theory and literature during my studies in art education in
a university that has left-leaning political alignment. I discovered bell hooks and critical
pedagogy, and read about Judy Chicago’s teaching methods. Spending long hours in the
department’s library, I introduced myself to intersectional feminism, Linda Nochlin and the work
of the Guerilla Girls. I became aware of the flaws of an art world I always had wanted to be part
of. I started to think about alternatives and to hang out with self-identified outcasts and
outsiders.
Even when I’m upset I usually remain empathic and gentle. The artists and activists I
rub shoulders with are often aggressive and loud in their actions and they have every right to

6

be. Their voices need to be heard and their strategy is to yell and organize actions, and I
admire them for their courage, and the amount of energy they invest in activism. My own
strategy is one of resistance and negativity. I follow Judith Jack Halberstam’s proposition that
“… feminists refuse the choices as offered – freedom in liberal terms or death – in order to think
about a shadow archive of resistance, one that does not speak in the language of action and
momentum but instead articulates itself in terms of evacuation, refusal, passivity, unbecoming,
unbeing. This could be called an anti-social feminism, a form of feminism preoccupied with
negativity and negation._” In response to ordinary sexism, I make gestures of casual rebellion9
everyday. I show off my stretch marks and my fatness in a bikini at the beach. I wear pajamas
to work. I let my facial hair grow. I pull faces at strangers who stare. I let strawberries mould on
the counter. I don’t remove the cobwebs but beautify them. I feed sugar to spiders.
To most people, spiders are gross10. To pathologically anxious people like me, they’re
unbearable11. Their webs are unnoticeable until I accidentally catch one with my face, which
makes my heart skip a beat and which makes me shriek. I scream because maybe, maybe the
spider is entangled in my hair, or maybe it’s crawling under my shirt, and maybe it’s going to
find its way inside of me, up my nose, in my ears, or maybe I’ll inadvertently eat it. Spiders are
spooky and they make me lose my cool.
I wish it wasn’t so, because spiders are also beautiful. Their bodies look like minuscule
sculptures, adorned with the most intricate patterns. Their webs are magnificent and amazingly
functional. They are tireless workers. I read that every morning the spider eats its web and then
weaves a new one every night. I wonder if there are any lazy spiders, who don’t see the point
of repeating the same invisible work everyday, who would rather sleep one more hour. I feel for
them.
September 2014. It’s the last few warm weeks of fall. I go for a stroller walk everyday,
sometimes a few times a day. I can’t help but to think of the freezing months that are ahead of
us. Birds are leaving, leaves are falling, plants are drying and spiders are dying. I look for their
corpses on the ground but they’re not there. I wonder where they hide to die. There are only a
few left around the house. I’m relieved, I’m sad. I want to do something special for them, I want
to celebrate, to acknowledge their presence before they pass. I sprinkle cake decorations in
their webs. The spiders seem to appreciate the crumb-sized colourful candies: every time they
get their legs on one they suck on it for a while and then wrap the leftovers in silk12.

7

Fig. 1: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Spiders, 2015. 9” x 10”. Mixed Media. Used by permission of the artist.

8

I learn that spiders love and need fructose, and so in an attempt to do good, I throw
Jell-o powder in a web. The spider leaves and never comes back. I make a note to myself:
spiders don’t like Jell-o. I feel sorry for expropriating the poor thing out of its home. When I
express feelings of guilt to my partner, he reminds me that most people just kill them without
remorse, which for a moment makes me feel better about myself.
There are a handful of women artists who are frequently associated with the figure of
the spider, such as Louise Bourgeois and Eva Hesse. Nina Katchadourian is a multidisciplinary
artist that also worked with actual spiders, as well as other animals such as caterpillars. During
a stay in Porto, Portugal, in 1998, she mended broken spiderwebs with red thread. On her
website, the project is categorized under both labels “photography” and “uninvited
collaborations with nature”. She and I share a common interest for understated, humorous and
playful gestures. While she considers her work as photography, I prefer to think that my
practice is part of what Patrice Loubier labeled as Art furtif, a certain kind of intervention or
performance, most often in an urban setting, that is so understated that it often goes
unnoticed. In, Les Commensaux he writes: “Furtive work is first noticed only by chance, while
strolling for instance (...); it is understood as an anomaly that breaks with the familiarity of a
place, however discreetly.13” The discretion inherent to the gesture of feeding spiders and the
small size of the material traces it leaves makes it easy to miss.
I think that most people who saw the sprinkles in the webs didn’t see them. Or maybe
they saw them and didn’t know that it was art. Or maybe they saw them and they knew that it
was art. Or maybe they ceased to be art when I stopped looking at them. And maybe art is in
the eye of the beholder. In the article “How to Recognize a Furtive Practice: A User’s Guide”,
Kathleen Ritter writes: “The furtive is risky because, like irony, there is the chance that it will not
be noticed. But this chance of misrecognition is what makes the discovery of the furtive act
rewarding. It underscores the possibility that furtive actions may be performed around us
everyday, yet go unnoticed.14” There is indeed some kind of comforting feeling that can be
found in knowing that art has the power to infiltrate and disrupt the everyday. It makes us pay
more attention to our surroundings and be on the lookout for absurd, playful and poetic
situations.
I relish the admittedly romantic idea that my work doesn’t need to be supported or
disseminated by a legitimate organization in order to reach an audience. However, I must find
ways to make it accessible in order to receive the feedback that will allow my practice to
evolve. For that reason, I like to experiment with alternative channels of dissemination, such as
posting content on the internet or self-publishing small zines that document my furtive

9

projects. These strategies allow me to be autonomous and avoid being dependent on the very
system that I’m critical of, the so-called “art world”. Producing zines from scratch and selling
them for next-to-nothing is a widely spread practice among grassroots activists and
underground artists. From the Riot Grrrl movement in the 90s to today’s comic artists who
can’t get a book deal and yet can’t stop making comics, making zines is an effective
dissemination strategy. For me, it proves to be an empowering practice, allowing me to do-itmyself and initiate the circulation of my ideas, words and work. Although I believe these
strategies have the potential to be transgressive, I’m aware that they do not strictly belong to
counterculture anymore. Zines are now embraced by the art world and are being sold in some
artist-run-centres as well as art book stores and fairs.
J’ai fait ça pour rien
My maternal grandmother, Lili, was a queen of the DIY. She was in her twenties during
the Second World War and she fully internalized the government invitation to “make-do and
mend”. My mother tells me stories of how nothing was allowed to go to waste, and how even
the water used to boil vegetables had to be upcycled into tomorrow’s soup. Lili sewed, knitted,
embroidered and weaved. She was a skilled and tidy maker of useful things: garments,
blankets, home textiles. I inherited her crafting supplies: her jewelry, buttons, yarn and thread,
as well as her small Encyclopédie des ouvrages de dames, but I did not inherit of her skills. For
a while I really tried to walk in her footsteps. I failed over and over again. I made half a dress
and abandoned when I realized that I had sewn the armhole closed. I made ugly jewelry, halfassed embroidery, and endless “scarves”. One day I decided that I had wasted enough time
trying to make useful things. However I did not entirely give up on crafts. I am fascinated by
handmade objects that circulate outside the market, handed down or offered as gift. I am
emotionally attached to the pretty cushions, the rag dolls and the heavy woven blankets that
Lili spent hours making at the same time as she was working as a teacher and raising four
children. Although I am wary of the idea that a woman’s work is never done, I admire her
strength, the energy that she put into labour without expecting it to bring in money or praise. It
is a kind of labour that often goes unnoticed, like the meticulous, beautiful, invisible
spiderwebs.
Probably because I used to be a costume designer and a fashion history teacher, I have
a textile fetish. I am drawn to materials such as felt, fabric, yarn, and I tend to accumulate them
in boxes. Sometime last year, I started to crochet with my fingers after finding a bag of
colourful yarn remnants in my studio. Do you know that you can crochet with almost anything?
I had this beautiful yarn in my hands, and I didn’t have any chopsticks or crochet needles, or

10

pens, or paintbrushes within my reach, and I had the urge to do something with that gorgeous,
soft, shiny yarn, so I just started to use my fingers. Within minutes a long string of loops was
shaping up. The sequence of gestures — loop, pull, cross, drop, loop, pull, cross, drop — was more
satisfying than a game of Candy Crush Saga. I was captivated by the repetition and couldn’t leave
the work alone. The variations were even more pleasurable: change of stitch, of fibre content, of
colour, of thickness. I soon became obsessed with the work and I began to bring it with me
everywhere. I crochet with my hands in the metro, in meetings at work, while watching TV, while
walking on the streets. I like it when people watch me doing it, strangers, co-workers, students of
mine. They look at the chain of stitches dangling from my fingers, reaching and brushing the dirty
floor, and slowly piling up in a shapeless bunch on the ground. I’m performing the crocheting for
them, even if they don’t know that I’m performing. They ask me: Qu’est-ce que tu fais? and I
answer “C’est rien. Je fais ça pour rien.” Ritter writes that “The furtive action is also characterized
by a kind of resistance, as it runs against the stream of acceptable or expected behaviour in public.
It is by nature political, that is, it is concerned with the complexity of relations between people living
in society. The furtive act offers a proposition for an alternative way of living, opening up
possibilities in how we imagine public space.15” The material outcome of the work is unimportant.
In an attempt to describe it, I write: accumulation of nothing, dead skins of art making, art
shedding.

Fig. 2: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, J’ai fait ça pour rien (with cat for scale), 2015. Dimensions variable. Durational
performance, Mixed Yarns. Used by permission of the artist.

11

I do it for the pleasure of the repeated gesture and the satisfaction of producing
aimlessly, for the surprisingly liberating feeling of doing something slightly off, of wasting rather
than saving, of taking up space. I do it to fail at being correct, serious, and productive. In the
words of Judith Jack Halberstam: “… failure allows us to escape the punishing norms that
discipline behaviour and manage human development with the goal of delivering us from unruly
childhoods to orderly and predictable adulthoods. Failure preserves some of the wondrous
anarchy of childhood and disturbs the supposedly clean boundaries between adults and
children, winners and losers.16” Like a child playing a made-up game, making up rules as she
goes, I invent a new way to be in public, one that is slightly abnormal. Resisting the unspoken
rules commanding that I act like everyone else so as not to draw attention to myself, I fail to act
like an adult. J’ai fait ça pour rien takes place in the public sphere, but does not participate in
capitalism: J’ai fait ça pour rien resists the ethics of productivity that was reinforced on me by
my mother, whose mother would give her mending to do as soon as she would sit down to
rest.
I wonder what Lili would think of such gestures. She probably would have been
shocked. As she writes about the faith of Quebecoises authors such as Nelly Arcand, Patricia
Smart describes how Catholicism has shaped our sense of self, from mother to daughter:
“Whether she agrees or not, woman is condemned to incarnate the body, which Catholic
patriarchal society sees as the root of all evil. Meanwhile, she is invited to transcend that body
in becoming the angel of the house, doomed to pass on the malaise and commandments to
future generations. ” Was it to achieve this impossible disembodiment that Lili became a laic
_

nun? According to the stories my mother told me, she was pious, vain, controlling and
dedicated to the transmission of these traits. Even if I only knew her for six years, I remember
her in a different way. I remember a sweet grandmother who would laugh at her love handles
calling them her “tires”, prank my little cousin by asking her to pull on her fake teeth and her
fake breast, and spoil us with a lot of sugar. Looking back on my research, I believe that parts
of my identity have been shaped both in opposition to her strictness and in accordance with
her playfulness. Thinking about my own daughter, I wish that these gestures effectively stop
the transmission of shame.

12

2. Incarnation
Food Experiments

I like food. I love to eat, to smell, taste, sip, suck, taste, chew, swallow and digest it.
I don’t like to cook. Cooking makes me anxious, it requires too much energy and so many
precautions. I don’t like that it’s regarded as a feminine responsibility and as a mother’s duty. I
don’t want to enact the heteronormative narrative that underlies it. It’s also too much pressure
for me to handle, making sure that everyone is pleased with the appearance and the taste of
the food, and has enough of all the nutrients they need, and not too much of the bad stuff:
sodium, bad fats, refined sugar. Food can so easily turn from desirable to disgusting17.
Growing up, while she was teaching me how things work in the home, my mother urged me to
only cook in a kitchen that has just been thoroughly cleaned. She also demanded that I wear
an apron and a headband and that I tie up my hair. I learned that it doesn’t take much to spoil
food, and that even something as small as an eyelash can elicit disgust and cause shame to
the guilty cook. I have memories of cooking with my mother, cooking with my aunts, cooking
with a mother-in-law, of being supervised and judged. Of feeling tested and failing the test.

Fig. 3: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Ruining the Whipped Cream, 2015. 5” x 5”. Pen on index card. Used by permission
of the artist.

13

My body responds strongly to ideas related to food. I’m easily gastronomically aroused.
Thinking about tangy and acidic tastes like vinegar and lemon makes me drool. Dreaming of a
crème brûlée inevitably makes me hungry. I enjoy imagining the cracking sound of the caramel
crust when I tap it with my spoon, shoving it in the silky, creamy flan and putting it in my
mouth. I like the feel of unusual textures against my tongue, my gums, my palate, and how
some things resist while other squish when I crush them with my jaw. I remember the
crunchiness of fresh carrots and cucumbers that we would pick from my grandfather’s
vegetable patch when I was just a little kid. We would rinse them with the water from the hose
that had a mineral taste. In that same garden there were bushes where I would forage for sour
gooseberries and sweet raspberries. They were red and shiny and looked like little jewels in the
green foliage.
I enjoy eating raw meat. I call it tartare, sushi, ceviche, carpaccio. When I use foreign
words to talk about it, it sounds fancy and delicious. The truth is, I like to consume uncooked
flesh, raw fat and blood. I eat dead animals that were bred, killed and sold for human
consumption, concealed under condiments and a sprig of fresh parsley. When I put it this way,
it is horrific and disgusting18. I’m baffled by the contradictions inherent to my relationship with
food, and by how my notion of what is and isn’t edible was shaped by my sociocultural
background19. For instance, while the idea of eating bugs is strongly revolting to me, I consider
honey a treat. I would never eat a piece of mozzarella that has even the slightest sign of going
bad – I cannot stand a tiny bit of green fuzz, even if it is removed and cut away – yet I enjoy
eating blue cheese. It seems obvious to me that one’s socioeconomic status plays an
important part in what they eat20, but it is less acknowledged that it also determines what food
will be rejected. I grew up in a middle class household where we always had more than enough
to eat, where a wrinkled tomato or a blackened banana could be discarded and not necessarily
used in a recipe, where we could afford our disdain of imperfect food. Thinking about food in
relation to social hierarchies has made me aware of how much disgust and shame are at play
in relations of power.
Take for instance processed meat. Growing up, my parents seldom let me eat hot-dogs,
and always told me that if I knew what was in it I wouldn’t want to have it anyway. This idea
that there is something abject in luncheon meats and the likes seems to be common
knowledge. In the episode “Lisa the Vegetarian” of the TV show The Simpsons, Lisa pictures
hot-dog meat as a combination of rat, pigeon, raccoon and an old boot21, which to me are
symbolic of pests and disease carriers, and the opposite of food22. The first time I had a fried
baloney sandwich was in my teenage years, at a friend’s place, and it was delicious. It was

14

salty, crunchy, and eating it felt like transgressing a taboo. For my friend it was just a regular
lunch. It was what his family could afford, and they weren’t making a fuss about what was or
wasn’t in it. Thinking about it nowadays, I am afraid that there is not much of a stretch between
showing disdain for a kind of food and having contempt for the people who it eat. Could there
be a political project in learning how to tame feelings of repulsion and disgust?

Fig. 4: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Baloney Sandwich, 2014. Dimensions variable. Baloney and mustard on white bread.
Used by permission of the artist.

The complexity of food is why I wanted to work with it in the first place. The power it
has to be strongly attractive or repulsive, its potential to trigger a political reflection, as well as
its ephemerality are the main aspects that I wanted to address. The use of food as an artistic
medium and the interest for cooking and feeding and eating as artistic gestures are not new.
Among the artists who served meals as art were Marinetti and the Futurists in the 1910s,
surrealist artist Meret Oppenheim in 1959, George Maciunas and Fluxus in the 1960s and
1970s, and a growing number of contemporary artists including Claudie Gagnon, Massimo
Guerrera and Iwona Majdan. Like them, I want to make food and call it art. But when I cook,
what exactly will make it art rather than just food, other than my own claim? I know for sure
that it doesn’t have to do with the beauty of the end result. I don’t think that it would fit in an art
collection, and so I can’t argue that it has a place within the art market. If I serve it in a gallery,
and if artists and curator are aware of it, will it make it be art in a stronger way than if I leave it

15

in my backyard? Philosopher of art Fabienne Brugère would disagree. In her article “The
Disappearance of the Artwork”, she describes artistic practices that don’t focus on the
production of material: “Art does not deploy itself only as a succession of productions offered
to the veneration of the public in museums or in galleries, but equally as an artistic path or
trajectory. (…) Ensuring that the trajectory is the equivalent of the work, that the work is nothing
other than an artistic experience (including the experience of not making), may be the
paradoxical signature of the contemporary artist.23” She argues for a theoretical framework
“that leads to the idea that in art the experience is of greater value than the work, the artistic
proposition is worth more than the art object, and the journey is more meaningful than the
result.24” In this case, both the artistic proposition – playing with food and serving playful food
in order to to foster a reflection about affect and identity – and the exploratory process register
in my artistic research.
I slowly heat marshmallows with a spoonful of butter in a big pot on the stove. As they
melt they become sweaty, gooey, and then they fuse together to become a big white blob of
foam. A sweet smell of fake vanilla fills the kitchen. I stir the mass with a metal spoon and it
soon becomes sticky and stringy. I get excited by the texture and I imagine pouring the sugary
magma on the table of my home studio, covering cardboards boxes and old sculptures, putting
my hands in it, pulling marshmallow strings and sticking them to the floor, the walls, the ceiling,
making a marshmallow web and watch the bugs getting caught in it. Without thinking about it I
grab a bottle of blue food colouring and squeeze it into the marshmallow that immediately
turns turquoise. I pour a bag of Rice Krispies and mix to the sound of the snapping, crackling,
and popping. That doesn’t look like food, but it’s very pretty. In a deep pan I lay a bed of
muticoloured sprinkles before adding the warm preparation. Unsatisfied, I make a second
batch of melted marshmallows, pink this time, in which I incorporate Cheerios. I add it as a
second layer to my work in progress. After it cools down and almost turns to plastic, I remove it
from the pan. I’m happy with the way that the two layers contrast: blue-green against pink, the
crumbly against the loopy. It almost works as a sculpture, but it will be cut and eaten, or
discarded. I believe its ephemerality makes it more poetic, because its raison d’être is
ambiguous, and because its absurd nature makes it escape easy commodification.
There are many Pinterest moms who bake and make ridiculously beautiful desserts.
And then there are those who, like me, feel dysfunctional when they browse through pictures of
perfect cakes, perfect birthday party decorations, perfect matching outfits, perfect illusions of
flawless lives. I create a board that I label Fuck You Pinterest where I keep these pictures. I
share pictures of my mess, but no one likes them. Suddenly inspired and fuelled by my

16

frustration in front of these ludicrous expectations, I cook like a five-year-old child without
supervision. I make colourful, imperfect parfaits by layering rice noodles dyed in green, pink
icing, blue Jell-o, white whipped topping and enoki mushrooms in a glass cup. They are each
delicious in their own, but the use of unusual ingredients and textures make them repulsive. I
put them in my garden as an offering to friendly ants and flies.

Fig. 5: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Parfaits, 2014. Dimensions Variable. Mixed Foods. Used by permission of the artist.

Back in the kitchen, I make up recipes as I go, mixing everything together without any
care. I pour warm, slimy Jell-o over Rice Krispies squares that then disintegrate and start
floating at the surface. The Jell-o sets and is cut in chunks that look like precious stones,
according to my friend Sarah. “It looks like puke to me”, I reply. “Well, maybe a little bit of
both”, Sarah admits. “Food loathing is perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of
abjection.25”, Kristeva states. “Perhaps you’re right, Julia.” I reply in my head, “Perhaps you’re
right.” Tomorrow I will feed people at an art opening with this over-sugared, brightly-coloured,
and sweet-looking dish.

17

Fig. 6: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Food Experiments, 2014. Dimension variable. Mixed Foods. Used by permission of
the artist.

Among the many artists who use food in their work, there are two Québécoises whose
practices I especially relate to. Claudie Gagnon collaborates with eminent chefs to create
elaborate banquets that are part installation, part sensorial experiences, in line with Fluxus’
happenings. She experiments with colour, textures, shapes, tastes and smells to create
unusual meals with surprising associations. In Gagnon’s surrealist cooking, things are not
always what they look like. She calls trompe-goûts the repulsive edible sculptures that are
enjoyable to eat26. The intertwinement of domestic life with artistic practice is something that
we have in common, as well as a propension for accumulation and excess, and a playful
approach to artmaking. However, her work is more theatrical, polished and precious than mine,
and engages with different politics. For that matter, my work is more similar to the performative
practice of Nadège Grebmeier Forget. She uses food in her performances that are
simultaneously attractive and repulsive, erotic and grotesque. In Creamy Deluxe, she smears
cake icing and donuts on her thighs. In Just Looking, performed in Berlin in 2013 for an
audience of thirty-five, she shoves cakes under her stockings to create a bulgy behind and
sticks sparklers in it. She is concerned with the complex and sometimes conflicting

18

relationships between food, beauty, sexuality and the female body. Through these
transgressive and aesthetically excessive performances, Grebmeier-Forget defies diktat of
female obedience and stands out as a powerful role model.

Figure 7 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.

Fig. 7: Nadège Grebmeier Forget, Just Looking, 2013. Dimension variable. Performance.

Cake Queen
Created with the idea of exploring deliberate gender failure as a strategy of resistance,
Cake Queen is a video-performance in which I smear food on my face while replicating the
gestures of putting on make-up. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler writes that gender identity is
“a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce
the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being. ” By repeating these gendered
_27

gestures — applying foundation, knitting, icing a cake — outside of their context, I hope to
reveal their deceptive character, or at least, highlight their absurdity. The urge to desecrate
beauty rituals and indulge in food play comes from two different things. On the one hand,
watching my daughter explore her meals with her whole body, day after day, covering herself in
food from head to toe, makes me envious of her lack of self-consciousness and her instinctive,
embodied way of learning about food. On the other hand, reading fat studies literature brought
up the desire to transgress taboos related to the female body. As a fat woman, I’m often
confronted with other people’s opinion on what I should and shouldn’t eat. Eating in public is
always a risk: of being exposed to smirk remarks about my diet. “Do you really need to put
cream in your coffee? Why not milk?” I’ve been asked in the past. To stand up to those who
think that my BMI is a public concern, I round off Cake Queen by drinking cream from the
carton.

19

Fig. 8: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Cake Queen, 2015. 6:57. Video-Performance. Used by permission of the artist.

A few people who watched Cake Queen told me that they understood it as a gesture of
bravery, and that it felt liberating to them. I was at first surprised that something that I
perceived as self-absorbed and that was so enjoyable to make would first and foremost come
across as courageous. Even if transgressive intentions were the starting point, performing and
filming Cake Queen was done in a spirit of mischievous playfulness. In Les Commensaux,
Patrice Loubier writes: “Playfulness thus leads one to take into account the pleasure this type
of gesture can provide to its instigator: the enjoyment of removing oneself from the universal
imperative to make sense, to hijack principle into derision, to taste a certain gratuity, to reach
others unbeknownst to them.28” By enacting this playful and absurd routine in front of the
camera, I experienced the pleasure of transgressing expectations regarding womanhood and
the actions of feeding and eating. The interdiction to play with food is one of the first and
strongest proscription we learn in our lives.

20

3. Reincarnation
Inside/Under
When I got pregnant in the spring of 2013, I started to be more aware of my own body
and of its distinct, uncontrollable drives. My corporeal needs and reactions were stronger and
often took over my rationality. I was so nauseated I could barely eat, I was exhausted and
could not work as hard as I wanted to, I was easily overwhelmed by smells or sights. I had an
episode of phobia triggered by a midge that was flying in my studio: I became uncontrollably
itchy and shivery just by looking at its feathery antenna . I developed trypophobia, a strong
repulsive reaction to textures that are shaped with irregular patterns of holes, such as a coral or
a beehive. While I understood that these disease-avoidance sensations and reactions were
programmed in my brain to protect me and my foetus, and transmitted from generation to
generation since a very long time, I felt frustrated by the lack of control over my own self that it
evidenced. In an attempt to understand and overcome my phobias, I started a collection of
pictures of repulsive or frightening objects, textures and patterns. I would closely examine
them, hoping that I would eventually stop shivering. I tried to understand the language of
repulsion, and to use it in my pictorial work.

Fig. 9: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Inside/Under, 2013. 23″ x 35″. Pastel on Paper. Used by permission of the artist.

21

Coincidentally, motherhood made me strongly aware of my body; it brought to my
consciousness the fact that I’m made of biological matter. Having a developing living being
inside of me, moving and squeezing my organs, made me think about my insides. Seeing my
breast leaking milk for the first time was a shameful event, even if I was alone in the shower.
Giving birth caused a bloodbath and made me lay clots the size of an egg, and taking care of
my baby daughter meant that I had to manage human waste on a daily basis. If I had been
repulsed by these biological matters before, I was becoming desensitized. Because of my
growing interest for revulsion and disgust, I was encouraged to read the work of Julia Kristeva
on abjection29.

Fig. 10: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, High Theory Comix: Kristeva, 2015. 8” x 10”. Ink on paper. Used by permission of
the artist.

22

In her article “Against abjection”, Imogen Tyler argues that Kristeva has been mislabeled
as feminist and that she “never identified herself as a feminist, she has never aligned her work
with any larger feminist theoretical or philosophical project, on the contrary, she has repeatedly
distanced herself from feminism.30” She explains that Kristeva’s theorization of the abject is
something that feminist scholars should distance themselves from, since it contributes to the
narrative that the female body is unbearably repulsive, and reinforces the idea that it should be
annihilated: “Kristeva theorises abjection in distinctly phenomenological terms, associating the
abject with all that is repulsive and fascinating about bodies and, in particular, those aspects of
bodily experience which unsettle singular bodily integrity. (...) The abjection of the maternal is
not just a theoretical fiction, but speaks to living histories of violence towards maternal
bodies.31” In my work, I foster the association of the repulsive with the fascinating, in an
attempt to open a different perspective on what is usually considered disgusting and
insupportable, one of curiosity and openness. I want to avoid at all costs the conflation – as in
Kristeva– of the messy feminine body with abjection, something that must be rejected.
Still Life
I was raised to believe that sterile equals pure, and that while it is acceptable to expose
ourselves to chemicals in the form of cleaning products, we should be afraid of microscopic
bacteria and dust mites. In her autobiographical accounts of her childhood, my sister evidence
the force with which these ideas were imposed on us.

Fig. 11: MMP, Cray Cray, 2015. 5,5”x9”. Ink on paper. Used by permission of the artist.

23

Fig. 12: MMP, Lake, 2015. 8,5”x14”. Ink on paper. Used by permission of the artist

24

I let fruits and vegetables mould and decompose, in an attempt to yield the creative
power of decay, feeding microorganisms32. Bacteria and fungi feast on the leftovers and wrap
them in delicate white cotton. I leave old apples and grapes in the backyard for anyone to
munch and soon there are squirrels, bees and ants working on it. I like to watch the fruits and
vegetables metamorphose over time, observing, as did Ovid33 and Lavoisier34, that nothing
ceases to exist completely. Sometimes I think I should clean up the mess, that the neighbours
must hate me. But not until next week, I want to see how much of the apples will remain. Not
until next spring, I want to see how they will look after spending the winter under the snow. My
fascination for natural phenomena is nearly mystical, and the observation of metamorphosis
brings me to a state of contemplation.

Fig. 13: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Still Life, 2013. Dimensions variable. Rotting Fruits and Vegetables. Used by
permission of the artist.

I have a genuine fascination for the (super)natural and irrational forces such as what we
call magic. To understand why, a quick look at my familial background is meaningful: I was
born in the aftermath of the “Quiet Revolution” in Quebec, a time when people disowned the
Catholic religion in a strong collective move. My parents grew up in the countryside where the

25

Catholic church was extremely powerful. Both my mother’s parents belonged to the clergy: my
grandfather was a defrocked priest and my grandmother was a laic nun, a secret that we only
discovered after her death. My uncle is the Bishop of Lae in Papua New Guinea. Considering
this, it’s understandable that the Quiet Revolution could not entirely shake religion out of my
parents. Consequently, I grew up mostly outside of church but believing in mystical forces. As
a teen, I was attracted to weird cults and tiny eccentric religious groups like a moth to electric
light. I attended spiritual awakening weekend retreats where they barely feed you and make
sure that you don’t sleep enough, because these are the best conditions to make you
hallucinate and see God. I ate dal with Hare Krishna but didn’t buy the book. I sat on
uncomfortable chairs as motivational speakers attempted to deconstruct and reconstruct my
ego. I hung out in the sun in Sydney with fasting Mormons. I listened to the stories of Sai
Baba’s miracles. I bought all the candles and the incense that were supposed to make me a
witch. What remains from all this is a taste for places, events and things that help you recede
deep inside yourself. To this day, there is nothing more akin to spiritual beatitude for me than
watching a spider weave its web.

Downstairs
The basement of my house is a damp old storage space. There is a specific nook that is
especially creepy. It used to be a workroom, or at least this is where the previous owners
stored their tools. We know it because this is also where they left their tools. Sometimes I think
that they were too scared to go in that corner to fetch them. I brought in there my ever-growing
personal collection of organic matter, yummy-yucky ugly-pretty stuff and esoteric objects.
These are the things that I own and that reference the natural world and its oddities. There are
some natural found objects, such as corals and shells, a raccoon hide, bones, plants (some are
dried and some are rotting in jars) and stones. There are some man-made objects such as
figurines, decorated boxes and corrugated cardboard sections. Lastly, there are drawings,
paintings and sculptures that represent monsters and organic structures. I placed them in the
space, I made an installation and titled it Downstairs. I can argue that the making of Downstairs
took place over many, many years, starting with the loss of my first baby tooth that my mother
decided to place in a crystal case, to every single time I gathered strange-looking stones and
branches, to the very recent realization that all these things could be having an interesting
conversation if I placed them in a small room together.

26

Fig. 14: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Downstairs (detail), 2015. Dimensions variable. Mixed Media Installation. Used by
permission of the artist.

Fig. 15: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Downstairs (detail), 2015. Dimensions variable. Mixed Media Installation. Used by
permission of the artist.

27

Downstairs doesn’t have a center you can stare at. To experience it, one has to move
around. One will want to get closer to take a good look at the jars to see what’s rotting in them,
or examine the details of a meticulously crafted sculpture. One will find that other things, like
the shells and corals for instance, are more interesting from a distance, seen in relation to each
other. Maybe sometimes one will step back because they will see something repulsive (that
faint smell of kelp comes from their imagination). One will keep moving back and forth in
space, building a tension through a growing feeling of disgust, a fear that something alive
might crawl on their skin. That tension slows them down and keeps their eyes wide open.
A few years ago I saw an exhibition that had a similar effect on its audience: Les queues
de comètes, an installation by Claudie Gagnon. She and I share a common background in
scenography, and an interest for theatrical displays. In that dimly lit installation, she suspended
clutters of common, domestic materials — such as steel wool and sprouted potatoes — that
moved softly when you walked around them.

Figure 16 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.

Fig. 16: Claudie Gagnon, Les Queues de comète, 2013. Dimensions unknown. Mixed Media Installation.

It is obvious that we both worked for the theatre : creating such an installation requires
the same kind of thinking and the same operations as creating a set does. You have to think
about space in terms of circulation, about light, about the different points of view of your
audience. You have to think about the material and what it conveys. You have to find, choose
and make a variety of things, and place them together so that they respond to each other. The
difference is that installation has to be thought of as independent while the set is a support for
the play. Another difference is that the installation will be experienced by the audience on an
intimate level, while the set is experienced by proxy, through the characters of the play.
The installation is a different kind of narrative device, one that has to be autonomous, or
be activated by the audience. I’m interested in the narrative potential of such a space, one that
is devised, designed and built for no other reason than to facilitate an experience of something
out of the ordinary. In her thesis about the work of Gagnon, Dominique Allard calls such

28

installations a “metaphorical device”: “In constant transformation, the metaphor’s efficiency lies
in its continual renewability and instant meeting of the audience and the work. It unfolds in the
imagination differently every time and is to be understood as a semantic event of the
coincidence of “horizons of expectation” from the audience and “possible worlds” of the
work.35”
There is an importance difference between the work of Gagnon and mine: while she’s in
control of every detail, I embrace chance, chaos, and the lack of control as a creative process.
My way of working requires a balance between action and non-action, between working
meticulously and observing quietly. This idea reminds me of the Zen principles that encouraged
John Cage and the Fluxus artists to embrace chance as an important part of their
methodology.

The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.36

In this aphorism, Laozi illustrates the concept of “wei wu wei”, or “action without
action”, sometimes translated as “effortless action”. In my interpretation of this paradox, one
should never to use excessive or coercive force on their environment -- on people or things -in order to achieve their goals, but rather collaborate with them in building together. In my work
I try to alternate modes of control and letting-go, and I enjoy short periods of intense labour
followed by introspective moments.

Homemaking
This is how I created the work titled Homemaking. It consists in part of a large,
inhabitable cardboard structure that I built by myself out of scavenged materials in preparation
for my thesis exhibition. While the making of Homemaking was physically intense, I designed
the structure in a way that would be possible for me to build it without any help, and without

29

completely exhausting myself. Even though I have a degree in scenography and have designed
sets in the past, I had never built any Iarge structure before. I had to experiment and teach
myself how to do it. I worked on it every single day for a month, and while doing so, I thought a
lot about labour, and making as an alternative way to think about power. In Feminist Theory:
From Margin to Center, bell hooks calls for a redefinition of power. She cites the work of Nancy
Hartsock, illuminating “definitions that equate power with the ability to act, with strength and
ability (…) Significantly, these understandings of power do not require the domination of others;
energy and accomplishment are understood to be satisfying in themselves.37” It would be an
important and maybe salutary shift if we, as a society, were to value dedicated labour38,
according to each one’s interests, strength and skills; not as a way to promote ourselves
against others but as a way to be together. Many people live their lives without thinking about
the power they have to put things in the world, other than by buying more stuff. I suggest that
we should value labour as a way to take part in the world, and to stop being mere spectators.
In Homemaking, I wanted to reconcile and represent the paradoxes that are at play in
my practice: material and immaterial, control and chaos, private and public. The idea was to
build a cardboard structure that I would transform over time by working every day inside of it,
and that the piece would only be complete after the last day of the exhibition. Both the
materiality and the process were important to me. The construction itself was an octogonal
form that occupied a eight-foot-cube space. On the outside, the walls consisted of an irregular
patchwork of corrugated cardboard painted in white. The inside of the structure was also blank
at the beginning, but little by little it became covered in colourful drawings and paintings.
I chose to cover the outside in white in order to give it a touch of modernist
seriousness, to pretend an attempt at blending in the pristine white cube. Its external looks
reminded many viewers of Rachel Whiteread’s sculpture, but the resemblance is only
superficial. We do share an interest for the domestic made public, but her sculptures are full
and massive, and focused on the density of defined spaces. In the case of Homemaking, not
only the structure was hollow, but my intention in creating the empty space was to set up a
place for things to happen. This work was presented in the gallery space, as it was my
contribution to my cohort's thesis show. My feelings towards having to adapt to a conventional
mode of exhibition and dissemination were ambiguous and contradictory. On one hand I was
thrilled by the opportunity to exhibit my work in a setting that guaranteed a large and diverse
audience; on the other hand, I feared that the formal character of the space would divest the
work of its agency.

30

Fig. 17: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Homemaking, 2015. 8’x8’x8’. Mixed Media Installation. Used by permission of the
artist.

In order to make the most of this situation, my first idea was to introduce an element of
chaos by bringing my eighteen-month-old daughter inside the space to draw and paint with
me. I took an impulsive and short-sighted decision to invite participation by leaving coloured
markers on the ground, and by moving away from the installation space. In a matter of
minutes, people were making their marks on the cardboard walls. It did not take me long

31

before I regretted my decision, and considered it as an act of sabotage, because it lead to the
destruction of the artwork as I had conceptualized it. But from the ashes of that defunct project
was born another one, similar but with a stronger relational component, and the challenges
that it brought up opened new areas of inquiry for my practice.

Fig. 18: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Homemaking (detail), 2015. 8’x8’x8’. Mixed Media Installation. Used by permission
of the artist.

Among the many encounters that took place in the installation, the most memorable
ones for me were the intervention of children of various ages. I enjoyed their enthusiasm, their
eagerness to fill up as much space as possible, and their lack of self-consciousness. On the
opposite side, the most difficult experiences were with teenagers. I was shocked (although not

32

surprised) by their impulse to test the boundaries of what is acceptable, by using vulgar
imagery and language and by drawing on the outside walls.

Fig. 19: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Homemaking (detail), 2015. 8’x8’x8’. Mixed Media Installation. Used by permission
of the artist.

The unplanned participative component of the work had for effect to confuse and
sometimes even upset part of the audience. Understandably, the intention behind the decision
to share authorship with the gallery visitors wasn’t clear. To some people, public participation
seemed unacceptable, ugly, unworthy of interest and almost disgusting. In Ugly Feelings,
Sianne Ngai defines disgust as “an emotional idiom defined by its vehement exclusion of the
intolerable.39” She tackles the question of “what can and cannot be “swallowed up” (that is,
what can and cannot be tolerated, benevolently or contemptuously) (..) to reflect upon the

33

limited agency of art itself in a commodified society.40” She argues that the capacity of the art
market to accept and value any form of art, and even the art that is created in reaction to it,
makes it impossible to make art that has actual agency.
I believe that engaging in an artistic practice that has a strong research component has
the power to make us better, more compassionate humans. I’m not sure if my work – and even
artworks in general – can have an impact on our politics, on our ways of living and on how we
think about togetherness, when the art market depoliticizes them and the outside world
doesn’t see them. The only possibility that remains is to foster a conversation inside our
schools and inside our public art spaces, and we as academics have the responsibility to make
sure that this conversation is selfless, accessible and inclusive of marginalized voices.

Fig. 20: Valérie Tremblay Blouin, Homemaking (exploded view), 2015. Mixed Media Installation. 8’x8’x8’. Used by
permission of the artist.

34

Conclusion
A letter to Monique Régimblad-Zeiber.
Monique,
It’s been almost five years since I was your student. I have never stopped thinking about
your class, and the things that I experienced with you are starting to make sense and come
together like the pieces of a puzzle, while I reflect on art making. I wanted to add “from a
personal point of view” but isn’t it always the case? In “Situated Knowledge”, Donna Haraway
proposes that there is a legitimate subjective way of knowing, stressing that a researcher
cannot detach herself from the web of relationships in which she is embedded, and that it is
more honest to foreground than to ignore them41. Situating ourselves as researchers in an
academic context, shedding light on what is influencing, informing and driving our research,
also has the merit to provide anchor points that allow our work to interlock itself with the work
of others and not float indefinitely in intellectual limbo.
I showed up to your course with all my stuff and a strong desire to make art. You told me about
the work of all these artists – you know so many of them – among them I remember Julie
Doucet and Claire Savoie. The prior because for the first time in my life, a teacher was
defending the legitimacy of raw, punk, feminist and sex-positive comix work in an academic
setting. The latter because of her approach to art making: constant, diligent work that blends
with the everyday and infiltrates its interstices. But most of all, their work made me feel less
isolated, more confident. These women were talking about their own personal experience of
life, without shame and with disarming honesty. I felt like my feelings of revolt towards a world
that wanted me to blend in were validated. Suddenly I understood that we are many who seek
a different way to be in the world, one that includes more play and poetry, and less shopping. I
felt like they were telling me to put a stop to being passive consumers of mediocre
entertainment that passes as culture, and instead be active producers of meaningful art,
situations, and relations. You talked to me about feminism, the ideas that belong to what I’m
now able to identify as second-wave feminism. We didn’t name names then, but we talked
about a shared experience of growing up and living in a world that considers and treats you a
little worse because you’re a woman.
Being a woman.
35

Now that I’m well-read in third wave feminism and queer theory, and that I hang out with
gender outlaws, talking about “femininity” or “womanhood” doesn’t feel as right and simple as
it used to. Now I know that I can only speak from my own personal experience, that mostly fits
in the gender binary narrative, and that this experience is not shared by all women. I was born
in a female body, I have a functional female reproductive system, I was raised as a girl. I
identify as woman and more-or-less willingly play that role. In the past two years I have
experienced pregnancy, birth-giving and breastfeeding my daughter. When I stir these ideas
and memories, I realize how important they were in the constitution of my own personal
identity.
Most current theories on personal identity acknowledge the fact that it isn’t monolithic and
fixed but rather complex, fluid, changeable. To me, this seems at once contradictory and
fascinating. How does something that seems so permanent as my self could not be set? Even
my body is in a constant state of transformation, and most of the cells that constituted my
body ten years ago have replaced themselves_42. This perpetual metamorphosis seems to
belong more to the realm of magic than to science, and this is why I wanted to investigate the
question of the self in the first place. What makes me who I am? How much of it is my physical
presence in the world? What about my memories, my values, my beliefs, my affects? Because
it is so difficult for me to grasp, and because reading French philosophy doesn’t seem to help, I
chose to use autoethnography and artmaking as ways to investigate and research. This is how
I make art nowadays: through play, extensive experimentation with material and free
association with personal memories. This process helps me to uncover images, affects and
narratives that are at the core of my personal identity. I then re-invest them in the making of
installations, comix and works of furtive art that can be understood as self-portraiture, but that
also tell their own narratives, whimsical and strange, naive and rebellious.
I believe that my writing and my work share a similar aesthetic: collage-like structured,
accumulating to excess, indulging in self-examination, rooted in sensations and affects. They
also function in the same way: by resisting expectations — by not complying — they question
the hierarchies of value at play in the art world as well as in the academia. I embrace the low —
cheap materials like cardboard and white glue, often acquired for free through donations or
scavenging, “low” art forms such as sketchy cartoons and deliberately deskilled craft works,
“low” theory harvested in pop culture such as children’s TV shows — as a way to challenge
elitism. To tackle issues around the commodification of art, I use different strategies that would
discredit my work in regards to the art market: the use of perishable materials, collaborations
with my baby daughter, private installations inside my house, and public performances
documented through amateur-looking videos and journaling.

36

I am told that exhibiting the work, having it exist outside the home or the studio, in the art
world, is what makes you an artist. I am told that it is what makes your work evolve, when it is
looked at and experienced by an audience that is interested and open to that sort of
engagement, one that requires an awareness of the field, of its history and its current
discourse. I am also told that the opportunities to do so are few. I don’t know if and when my
work to be given a shot, space, an opportunity. I can’t wait and hope for it to happen. I’m
working hard and sending applications to artist-run centres, as some of them participate in
expanding a culture of sharing, engagement and critical thinking, in which I believe — but I’m
also thinking about alternative routes. Making zines is for me a way of taking charge of the
dissemination of my work. It is a DIY approach to participating in the art discourse, to gain
autonomy.
Monique, it’s been almost five years since I was your student. I have never stopped thinking
about you, and these memories keep me going. You are a role model, a source of inspiration,
and I hope that I can be like you. I will not let the indignation fade away, I will not let them drag
me down, and I will continue to do my work.
Sincerely,
VTB

37

Endnotes
1 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, and Adam Frank. Touching Feeling. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2003. Print.
2 Halberstam, Judith. The Queer Art Of Failure. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2011. Print.
3 Ibid.
4 Ricoeur, Paul. Oneself as Another. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 (1990).
5 Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). “Autoethnography: an overview.” Historical Social

Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 273-290.
6 Halberstam, op. cit.
7 Doyle, Jennifer. Hold It Against Me. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2013. Print.
8 Halberstam, op. cit.
9 What I call Casual Rebellion is an informal, understated way of revolting against authority and

oppression. The power of casual rebellions only comes with accumulation, when the repetition of
contrarian actions becomes empowering, as it liberates the subject from feelings of shame and guilt. It is
a playful approach to resistance.
10 “Both spider distressed and nondistressed individuals reported disgust and exhibited disgust facial

expressions in response to a tarantula. Disgust in response to spiders was not found to be part of a
general disgust response to all negative stimuli, nor was it due to a general negative emotional response
to spiders. (...) The results of this study provide evidence that spiders have a specific disgust-evoking
status in both distressed and nondistressed populations.” Vernon, Laura L., and Howard Berenbaum.
"Disgust and fear in response to spiders." Cognition & Emotion 16.6 (2002): 809-830.
11 “Current evidence suggests that disgust is significantly related to small animal phobias (particularly

spider phobia), blood–injection–injury phobia and obsessive–compulsive disorder contamination fears,
and these are all disorders that have primary disgust elicitors as a significant component of their
psychopathology.” Davey, Graham CL. "Disgust: the disease-avoidance emotion and its dysfunctions."
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 366.1583 (2011): 3453-3465.
12 “Feeding experiments showed that these spiders consumed a variety of sugars found in extrafloral

nectar and honeydew. HPLC analysis of sucrose-fed spiders showed that they readily converted sucrose
into its constituent monomers and rapidly assimilated fructose. Furthermore, laboratory diet studies
demonstrated that consumption of sugar and other non-prey food resources could significantly improve
their survival, growth, and development.”
13 ” L’oeuvre furtive ne se remarque d’abord que par hasard, au fil de la promenade par exemple (…); elle

est appréhendée comme une anomalie qui rompt avec la familiarité du lieu, quoique de façon discrete.”
Loubier, Patrice, and Anne Marie Ninacs. Les Commensaux. Montreal, QC: Centre des Arts Actuels,
2001. Print.
14 Ritter, Kathleen. “How to Recognize a Furtive Practice: A User’s Guide” in Babin, Sylvette, and

Terrance Keller. Lieux Et Non-Lieux De L'art Actuel. Montréal: Éditions Esse, 2005. Print.
15 Ibid.
16 Halberstam, Op. cit.

38

17 For instance, stirring juice with a brand new comb has been used in psychology studies on disgust,

such as: Rozin, Paul, April Fallon, and MaryLynn Augustoni-Ziskind. 'The Child's Conception Of Food:
The Development Of Contamination Sensitivity To "Disgusting" Substances.'. Developmental Psychology
21.6 (1985): 1075-1079. Web.
18 I would like to briefly mention the work of antispecist ecofeminists such as Carol J. Adams, Marti Kheel,

Élise Desaulniers and Christiane Bailey, who argue that carnism is intricately tied to capitalism and
patriarchy. However, although I acknowledge that this is a crucial issue, I will not address it further within
the confines of this paper, as my research in this area is still limited and my understanding of it is not yet
fully developed.
19Rozin, Paul. "The socio-cultural context of eating and food choice." Food choice, acceptance and

consumption. Springer US, 1996. 83-104.
20

“Men’s and women’s ability to produce, provide, distribute and consume food is a key measure of their
power. This ability varies according to their culture, their class and their family organization, and the
overall economic structure of their society.” Counihan, Carole, and Steven L Kaplan. Food And Gender.
Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998. Print.
21	
   “Lisa the Vegetarian.” The Simpsons: Season 7. Writ. David S. Cohen. 20th Century Fox, 2005. DVD.
22I would even argue that the boot is a signifier for the lack of food in popular culture. I’m thinking about

the trope of fishing up an old boot, or eating one. For instance, in Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, the
character of the Tramp is so hungry he has to boil and eat his own shoe.

23	
  Brugère, Fabienne. “The Disappearance Of The Artwork”. esse 66 (2009): n. pag. Web. 11 Sept. 2015.
24	
  Ibid.
25 Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S Roudiez. Powers Of Horror. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Print.

26 “Des pièces pas forcément agréables à regarder agiront à titre de trompe-goûts, mais je vous assure

qu’elles seront toutes délicieuses à déguster, confectionnées dans les règles strictes de salubrité et
d’hygiène. Le MAPAQ [ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec] pourrait
débarquer et n’y verrait rien à redire.” Ducharme, André. 'Claudie Gagnon : De L’Art Mangeable L'actualité'. L'actualité. N. p., 2013. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.
27 Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.
28 “Le ludique amène ainsi à prendre compte du plaisir que ce type de geste peut provoquer à leur

instigateur: jouissance de se soustraire à l’universel impératif de faire sens, détourner le principe en
dérision, de goûter une certaine gratuité, d’atteindre autrui à son insu.” Loubier, Patrice, and Anne Marie
Ninacs. Les Commensaux. Montreal, QC: Centre des Arts Actuels, 2001. Print.
29 Kristeva, Op. Cit.

30 Tyler, Imogen. "Against abjection." Feminist Theory 10.1 (2009): 77-98.

31 Ibid

32 Like Sam Taylor-Wood in her 2001 video, Still Life, I’m interested in the transformations that occur

without human intervention. Her work captures and present an accelerated decomposition of a bowl of
fruits. I prefer to observe the metamorphosis in real time.

39

33 “Everything changes, nothing dies” in Ovide, A. D. Melville, and Edward John Kenney.

Metamorphoses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Print.
34 “In nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes.” in Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent.

Elements Of Chemistry, In A New Systematic Order. New York: Dover Publications, 1965. Print.
35 Allard, Dominique. "La métaphore «renouvelée» comme modalité d'indécidabilité en art actuel: David

Altmejd, Claudie Gagnon et Carsten Höller." (Thesis) Université du Québec à Montréal, 2010.
36 Laozi., Gia-fu Feng, and Jane English. Tao Te Ching. New York: Vintage Books, 1972. Print.
37 hooks, bell. Feminist Theory From Margin To Center. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1984. Print.
38	
  Here I’m not talking about work in liberal terms — paid labour as a way to accumulate wealth and

position oneself in a social hierarchy — but about physical or intellectual activity that produces new
things, knowledge, narratives.
39 Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. Print.
40 Ibid

41 Haraway, Donna. "Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial

perspective." Feminist studies (1988): 575-599.
42	
  “Every one of us completely regenerates our own skin every 7 days. A cut heals itself and disappears in

a week or two. Every single cell in our skeleton is replaced every 7 years.” Stemcell.stanford.edu.
'Research - Stem Cell Biology And Regenerative Medicine Institute - Stanford Medicine'. N. p., 2015.
Web. 12 Sept. 2015.

40

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44