Ana Teixeira & Anne Fauteux

Curated by: Emelie Chhangur, Mona Filip

6 June 2008 - 12 July 2008
Opening Reception 5 June 2008 8pm

Thank you, come again! / Obrigado, volte sempre! / Merci, revenez bientôt!

Thank you, come again! / Obrigado, volte sempre! / Merci, revenez bientôt! brings together Brazilian artist Ana Teixeira and Canadian artist Anne Fauteux in a two-month residency and exhibition treading on the borders between art making and everyday life. Setting up a space for dialogue and exchange, the premise allows the interaction of the two artists, before and during the residency, to determine the direction of the work. This exhibition is curated by Emelie Changur and Mona Filip.

In her “street action series,” Ana Teixeira orchestrates conditions under which she can interact with the public, one-by-one. She generates alternative circumstances for personal exchange, sometimes through trading one thing for another, other times through an experiential process that initiates new possibilities for a meaningful encounter with others. Anne Fauteux’s practice aims to infuse ordinary interactions with artistic gestures and to bring a dimension of lived life to art experiences. Her Bureau des objets lyriques migrateurs (Bureau of Migrating Lyrical Objects), a parody of bureaucratic structures that she established in 1999, provides a framework for “socio-poetic experiments,” creating situations for public engagement and exchange.

Contextualizing the artists’ practices, the exhibition presents two of their older works alongside new performance-based projects that will evolve throughout the duration of the show. In Listening to Love Stories, which she has performed in six different international cities, Teixeira creates an intimate encounter with the passer-by, offering her ears to their confessions. Beside the past versions of the project, Teixeira will be creating a new one, by listening to love stories in the diverse neighbourhoods of Toronto. Fauteux’s Phagocyte Project is a wearable intestine-like stuffed object made from donated recycled materials, becoming a fragmentary portrait of a community. Contributors, who shared their stories along with their belongings, received in turn a wearable appendix of the Phagocyte inscribed with an altered proverb with a digestive twist, to be persistently repeated by its owner until infiltrating common jargon.

Continuing to poetically subvert the fabric of everyday, Fauteux’s new project, Licentious Anonymous, invites people who could benefit from more freedom, courage, and creativity to get a license that allows them to do something they wouldn’t otherwise dare, think, or make time to do. Lending each other the courage to have new experiences, participants carry out actions conceived by previous beneficiaries based on their frustrated desires.

Teixeira’s new project, I Lend You My Eyes, offers us new ways to perceive and understand the experiences of others: how we can get to know one another regardless of distance or difference. The artist lent her eyes to Torontonians who wanted to see, do, or experience something in São Paulo. In fulfilling their desires, she created individual works that act as documents or souvenirs of their surrogate experience of São Paulo. Participants are invited to meet her at Mercer Union to receive their specially created package. While in residence, Ana will similarly experience Paulistans’ wishes. Ultimately, the two projects create a space for us to literally see and experience things differently through the eyes of others.

Mercer Union
37 Lisgar Street
(one block SW of Queen and Dovercourt)
www.mercerunion.org

Mercer Union gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council