2024

Description:

Jean-Philippe Poirier is an Art Education student with a performance art practice based on magic, repetition, and walking. He developed this practice during the pandemic throughout his drawing classes held at Concordia. “In this recorded performance piece, I build a shrine using human-made objects and leaves found on site. As I walked up and down the stairwell located in one of the staircases of the Papineau underpass, I began grabbing objects one at a time and began building the shrine on the rest area between the flights of stairs. Each object was then placed delicately onto the cyanotype papers, which were placed in a circle. I used cyanotypes in order to capture the essence of the objects that were used to build the shrine. In addition to the sound of the steps and my breathing, there was the sound of the cars, the wind and conversations that appeared throughout the performance, adding another layer of materiality, which added some sense of the unexpected to the otherwise repeated actions performed. At one point during the performance, I entered the circle; thus extending its magic around me, protecting myself from the coldness of the outside.” (poirier, 2024)