About
In hostile social, legal and cultural contexts, many emotional queer experiences have been conditioned by coercion, concealment and insecurity. Window-windows IV or At dawn the bruised loves are born is the fourth iteration of a series where Felix Denis wonders about the margins of history. Gathering photographs, drawings, textile works and textual documents, Window-windows IV mobilizes a selection of archives from the 19th to the 21st century about queer communities. The exhibition seeks to hijack them in order to make known, embody and make feel the historical and current violence perpetrated by the police and the judiciary. The available archives offer a fragmented narrative: incomplete documents, discontinuous narratives, significant absences. The exhibition links past experiences and contemporary readings, in order to recognize historical injuries while highlighting the forms of resistance that have emerged from them. Without wanting to be a smooth celebration of history or a fetishization of the archive, the beauty of the archives comes up against the violence of these stories, making it possible to make visible emotional stories long marginalized and to reflect on the conditions for their recognition. This installation is intended to be a sensitive and located approach of events previously kept in the closet, too often silenced. Using archives as a raw material, the artist and the commissioner invite the public to dialogue with these remains, to understand them and to honour them. Equitable interpretations, compassion and sharing are welcome.
Credits
Félix Denis (artist) Marian Fournier (Researcher-Commissioner)