Visual Arts
Ginette Aubin
 

Photo of Ginette Aubin
Thumbnail of Abordage Thumbnail of La pipe de ton ancêtre
Thumbnail of Princesse Malécite
A painter and engraver from the Malecite nation in Quebec, Ginette Aubin is currently concentrating on an open body of work, drawing deeply on the history of her people Her works are found in several private and public collections, in Canada and Europe alike In Autumn 2005, two French galleries presented the very particular path taken by an artist who succeeds in making the traces of a distant past live in a flash of revelation. Ms Aubin is represented in Montreal by the Canadian Guild of Crafts.

Tracing, seeing: stone, paper, print/trace

Between the emblematic figure of her grandfather and the more enigmatic allusion to a Malecite princess, Ginette Aubin unfurls the map of her lands of identity. Stones speak and the artist has the key to this ancient speech that her grandfather gave her access to. The petroglyphs the Malecites have left us are the essential signs of their history. When the artist traces the lines of the petroglyphs, she is making a singular gesture that reveals how exemplary these images of another time were. She brings them over to this side of time, as witnesses whose fleeting presence, nearly an apparition, lights up places of origins.

And yet we encounter a body of work of patience rather than urgency. First of all, the patience of stones, embodying meanings that allow us to read the real and symbolic territories of the First Peoples, and the quiet patience of a grandfather who still knew how to listen to the ancient's voices and pass along their legacy. Beyond the vivacity of certain coloured pages, the ardour of the brushstrokes and the boldness of the compositions, there is the artist's patience as she gathers the authentic signs of her affiliation. Her works are signposts on her quest for identity.

Ginette Aubin's purpose is not to copy the past. What emerges from oblivion is not a long-ago past or a sense of nostalgia. We are convened to the becoming of a present that never stops taking place. The engraved surface thereby becomes the space where the imprint of the ancient Malecites and the artist's own strokes merge and create a new language, a living word.