Jérôme Havre

Statement

In recent years, my art practice has concentrated on issues of identity, communities and territories that affect me personally. As a French/Canadian Queer man of African descent, my work interrogates the place of culture and identity and investigates the political, sociological and identity processes of contemporary life on themes related to nationalism in France and in Canada.

A multidisciplinary approach has defined my exploration of these themes and attending questions. In my practice I use myriad of tools and methods and turns on my efforts to define how to make tangible these conditions of identity in settings that favor social transformation.

GlogauAIR Project

More recently, I have begun to reflect on the theories of intersectionality and the ways that this thinking frames the position of people who have endured different forms of domination or discrimination in regards to – race, gender, class and ethnicity -. These forms of oppression are interconnected, injurious and often self-perpetuating. Intersectionality allows for a deconstruction of the basic assumption that society is a homogenous group whose members share the same experiences and universal needs. This process of deconstruction creates a platform for dialogue that engenders alternative narratives of healing and liberation to emerge. In this context, I see the concept of intersectionality as a tool that can be used to contribute to personal development.

My practice turns on my efforts to make tangible these conditions of identity in settings that favor social transformation, and considers how these ideas and experiences can be articulated through arts. It is in this direction that I would like to develop a new inter-disciplinary project in Berlin, a narrative installation that poses a dialogue about influence of communities’ member of a minority group. To examine these questions, I will create a series of several puppets and experiment with the clown figure. The project will combine performance, photography, staging, soundtrack and video.

Working with the idea of a dynamic distinction between object and subject, I take advantage of this suggestive distance to animate the puppets, while altering and producing new codes of representation living in the collective imagination.

CV Summary

• Art residency ISCP – Brooklyn US(dec- feb)/ Group show Koffler gallery -Toronto/2016.
• Art residency Est-Nord-Est, Quebec/Art residency AGO, Toronto/Duo show Robert McLaughlin gallery/Solo show 14N 61W – Martinique/2014.
• Projet Public Window, Toronto/Confluence: Shifting Perspectives of the Caribbean, Canada. Curators: PamelaEdmonds/”Land Marks” Art Gallery of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Curators: Andrea Fatona/2013/Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto. Group show/Thames Art Gallery, Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada/Scope Fair, Donald Browne Gallery. New York, United States.
• Solo show/Territorial Re-Marks, The Front Room, Brooklyn, United States/2012/Art Toronto, Donald Browne Gallery, Toronto, Canada/Field Trip Project, Japan. Curator: Daisuke Takeya/Domestiquer, Donald Browne Gallery, Montreal, Canada.
• Solo show/2011/Sobey Art Award, Long list/Fibred Optics, Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond, Canada/2010/Insula Reflexions, MAI, Montreal, Canada. Solo show/The Night Watch, Toronto Nuit Blanche, Canada. Curator: Christopher Regimbal/2009/Fibred Optics, OAG, Canada. Curator: Andrea Fatona. Group show.

Gallery