DÉJÀ - The Collection on Display

Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art (Musée d'art contemporain deMontréal) is located right next to the Quartier des Spectacles at the very heart of Montreal. If you will attend any of the numerous free concert offered this summer at the Quartier, do not forget to drop into the Museum. Here is their website http://www.macm.org/en

Until September 4, 2011 the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, or MAC as it is called by the Montreal art aficionados, is solely featuring works from their own collection, amassed since 1964 when the Museum was first established. Their collection consists of over 7,000 works by more than 1,500 Quebec, Canadian and international artists. It encompasses many branches of artistic expression: painting, sculpture, installation, photography and works on paper. Many works also incorporate audio, video and film elements.

The diversity and uniqueness of works presently on display is quite remarkable. You will get a sparse overview of it from the video link at the bottom of this article. Yet, even that short video hints eloquently at the treasures to be discovered at the museum. For a more profound experience, visit the museum in person.

I will discuss only one of the works on display, just enough to entice you to attend the exhibition.















Louise Bourgeois, The Red Room – Child, 1994
Collection du Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
Photo : © Succession de Louise Bourgeois/Sodrac (Montréal), Vaga (New York)

The installation by Louise Bourgeois "The Red Room - Child" is not only a visual experience but an intellectual one as well. The meaning of the work is to be discovered by yourself. Look through the window pane in one of the doors that encircle an intimate space inside. What is behind that circle of closed doors? The predominant colour is red, as of fresh blood. Red thread from a number of spools stretches through the space. Are they blood vessels or are they raw threads of life still waiting and ready to be unwind from the stationary spools? Two cylindrical spools are of blue colour. Do they represent a royal blue blood or rather a hope for heavenly-like life?

Also inside are red hands truncated at mid-arm. They are made of wax and are of the same colour as the red thread. They are male, female and child hands. To the right, two child hands are enclosed by a man’s and a woman’s hands. At the back, on two iron pedestals, are placed two vase-like objects made from thick red wax ropes. The ropes resemble intestines. The vases’ shapes are somewhat feminine. Do they represent a mother and her female child?

Also at the back, a red lantern obscures the cut-off head of a lamb equally made of wax but of white colour with red blood stains. Is this a head of a sacrificial lamb? Are there religious connotation?

What does a red painted ladder-like object at the background below the blue spools represent? Trying to climb up on the path of one’s life? Striving towards the sky, towards one’s spiritual perfection?

You can ask a question: Are the cut-off hands and the blooded head of the lamb simply gross images, or do they signify the raw realities of life that in our everyday preoccupations we choose to be blind about, blotting them from our field of perception?

This conceptual installation by Louise Bourgeois generates more questions than answers. One can weave a story about it. One can project one’s own life s into it. One can interpret it according to one’s personal taste and one's emotional makeup. Bourgeois’ art is made in such a way that her aesthetic, emotional and intellectual sensibilities as well as her personal story woven into this piece will trigger a personal and even intimate response in a spectator.

Come and discover what you can find behind the closed doors of the Louise Bourgeois’s sculpture, as well as behind the open doors of the Montreal Museum of the Contemporary Art.

Here is the video I mentioned above

Déjà Exhibition Hightlights (Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Iui11tDfqI

Because you read this article this far, I will give you a hint. MAC is free of charge on Wednesday nights after 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. But you should really visit the Déjà exhibition during the regular hours on Tuesdays to Sundays between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. to support the museum.