At first glance, it looks like a wedding banquet. With an imposing glittering tiered cake here, chocolate tips there, small kitsch figurines included. It’s when you get closer that it gets worse…
It’s a piece of cake, an exhibition signed Céline B. The Terror (with a funny predestined name, because yes, that’s her real name) and whose curator is Joyce Yahouda, does indeed have a little je-ne-sais-quoi of freezing. And we’re not talking about icing here, even though there’s plenty of it.
Think: an S.O.S. in the icing, precisely, a handful of hair between different chocolate layers, or even a skull hidden in the cake. Not to mention that bone, those dentures, and even a (wisdom!) tooth that you’ll barely see hidden.
Violent, you say? Certainly, but with a little comical side, and funny too, nuance the artist, whose work was presented for the first time in 2019, as part of Underground Art, at the Maison de la culture in Pointe-aux- Aspen. Here she is finally back, as part of CAM (Conseil des arts de Montréal) on tour, at the Maison de la culture Maisonneuve until April 23. His installation then moved to LaSalle (from June 14 to July 14), then to the Plateau Mont-Royal (from August 24 to October 8).
Céline B. La Terror has always been interested in the status of women (she studied feminism alongside her studies in visual arts). “Domestic violence, we have to talk about it,” she explains in an interview. And that is perhaps a lighter or less heavy way, because there is also something playful about it. “Very dark humor, there is no doubt about it.
It was while reading Simone de Beauvoir that the artist, who teaches visual arts at the Cégep du Vieux Montréal, was first made aware, then “shocked” by the condition of the “second sex”. Then, with The Black Book of the Status of Women, a collective led by journalist and author Christine Ockrent, she began to turn them into “nightmares”. “Femicide, security issues, war rapes, honor killings, stonings,” she lists. I had nightmares about it. […] And then I stopped on the question of domestic violence, and by pushing my research, I realized how worrying it is. »
The theme of the wedding imposed itself, because Céline B. The Terror loves ceremonies, especially their kitsch aesthetic. For the record, it is with her aunt Louise (pastry chef “emeritus” by profession) that she makes her very first layered cake, for the 40th anniversary of her parents’ marriage, 10 years ago. It is this same cake in height, separated by crystal champagne glasses, typical of the 1960s, which inspired the main work presented here, an almost perfect replica of the original, although it is here in acrylic .
And it is to be mistaken, to see the precision of the details of the icing (we always come back to this), in particular. In fact, all the works in the installation are acrylic-based. “Basically, I do painting and drawing,” explains Céline B. La Terror. For me, it’s paint work, my medium is acrylic. I do acrylic on recycled containers. “In particular cans of paint, or cans of coffee. “For me, it’s 3D painting. Super realistic painting. That’s an understatement.
The hidden objects are all recycled, she insists: family jewels, bones (precision: turkey!), even the dentures (of her grandfather!). As for the skulls (yes, there are skulls) of squirrels or mice, they were given to him or were found. And yes, if you want to know everything, the wisdom tooth is his!