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Concordia University
Concordia University

Galerie FOFA

Galerie FOFA

Clara-Jane Rioux Fiset

vestiges de nos déshabillements

2022

Documentation shot of the installation vestiges de nos déshabillements which includes a grid of printed images of bathroom tiles on blue-ish paper made out of gathered toilet paper sheets. In front of the wall work, there is a small table with a steel business card box with toilet paper samples and a beige ceramic cross-like shapes. Next to the table, there is a ceramic reproduction of a faucet hanging to the wall from which a chain leads to an ill-fitted bath stopper. More ceramic cross-like shapes are scattered on the floor. Handmade paper, ceramics, wooden table, business card box, dimensions variable

Artist statement Artist’s biography

Artist statement

For months, Clara-Jane documented tiles from the bathrooms that crossed her path, from both public and private places. The photos are similar in form but differ in content by the stories these tiles contain and the spaces they delimit. She also collected toilet paper samples in each bathroom, as they also resembled little tiles with distinctive embossed patterns. The samples have been identified and organized in alphabetical order in a small business card box, which the audience is invited to browse. The remaining toilet paper has been made into paper sheets and used to print all the gathered tile images. These images have been then photocopied repeatedly until they degrade and cut into paper tiles to create this whole new layout. 
 
Through the combination of textiles, ceramics, and archive keeping, this work attempts to question our relationship to utilitarian and decorative objects. Their presence creates spaces of intimacy and security in our everyday lives. 
 
The bathroom, 
as an omnipresence, 
as a container for repetitive daily habits, 
as a portal of proximity with the body, 
as a way of exploring vulnerability.

Detailed photograph of the business card box with organized samples which have been identified and organized in alphabetical order.

Artist’s biography

Currently studying Fibre and Material Practices at Concordia University, Clara-Jane Rioux Fiset lives and works in  Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). Interested in sustainable practices in their art-making, they conducted research in 2022 on local natural dyes, funded by Concordia's Undergraduate Student Research Award program, resulting in a zine published at the Concordia Fine Arts Reading Room in 2023. Several of their works have been featured in group exhibitions, notably at Erga Gallery, Art Mûr, Atelier Galerie 2112, and VAV Gallery. 
 
Clara-Jane immerses themself in delicate and organic ways to create intimate spaces where people can recognize themselves. Through an exploration of the repetitive actions of everyday life, they extract the poetry of gentle yet significant moments, bringing them to the scale of the spectacular. Their installations blend fibres, metal, photography, and ceramics. The haptic quality of their work combines the unusual and the familiar, inviting viewers to engage with the ambiguous spaces they create. The image of the body is central to their work, as the human envelope becomes the main subject of their daily wanderings. Clara-Jane is interested in natural materials, which they often combine with repurposed objects to capture the materiality of everyday life in its ephemerality and in the permanent traces it leaves on our bodies.

 
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