Public Parking Publication | Manitoba

Half way through our conversation with artist Hannah Doucet she suggests we take a quick pause. “Wait, I kind of want a beer, does anyone want one? I feel like I’m getting very warm because I’m talking about myself too much and that makes me uncomfortable” she modestly offers. Doucet’s self-deprecating tendencies are readily apparent throughout our visit to her work studio. “Sorry, but I’m getting ready for a show now so my studio is kind of a mess and it starting to get into John’s[studio-mate] space” she apologizes as we arrive at her studio. When she’s not facilitating workshops at Art City, a local community art center, she shares her charming studio with her friend and housemate where she spends majority of her time working away on new projects in her practice. The Winnipeg-based artist’s work predominately engages with photography and it’s inherent inaccuracy as a tool for representation. But that simplifies it. Doucet’s explorations reaches into video, textiles, sculpture, and touches of performative processes. At the time of our visit, Doucet just shipped work off for an group show at Toronto’s Gallery 44 and was in the middle of compiling pieces for an upcoming solo show at The New Gallery in Calgary. She made some time for us to speak about her new work, what it is like to create self-directed works after being out of the guidance art school, and how important it is to surround yourself with great friends and fellow artists.

Doucet's studio. Photo Contribution by Adam Kelly

Luther Konadu: You have a very nice studio space; it seems to work well for what you do would you say so?

Hannah Doucet: Yes and no. I make a lot of work based in a photo studio work set up and there’s a lot of natural light in this space. Technically the whole point of a photo studio is to maintain controlled lighting and everything happens in kind of a black box and with these enormous windows this is the opposite of that, but I make it work.

LK: It’s nice to see you jump right into making your own self directed work fairly soon after being out of school and making your own work a priority as well. It’s such an easy thing to have slip away from you.

HD: Yes, that can be scary. I’ve had this conversation with a lot of friends this past year. We were just discussing ‘what makes someone an artist?’, if I don’t make art anymore am I still an artist? I know people who haven’t made work over this past year but I still obviously consider them artists and they still consider themselves as artists. Two years will go by and if you are still in that same position at what point do you say, “ok, I’m not an artist anymore” you know? I know that’s a narrow way of viewing what an artist is but it can be an interesting and at times super challenging transition coming out of art school. I guess for me, I am generally really hard on myself and I always think that I’m not making enough new work, but right now I’ve gotten myself in a rhythm where I’m pretty happy with and I’m at the studio working whenever I can be. Which I love.

Photo Contribution by Adam Kelly

LK: Do you find getting asked to put work in shows is another drive for making new work?

HD: Absolutely, that’s the best thing about shows. It gets me really focused on my work, and there is this exterior motivation, and timeline- that’s key! I feel like I’ve made more work in the past two months, prepping for these two upcoming shows than I have in the entire past year.

LK: With the amount of work you are producing in comparatively short amounts of time, are you able to find brain space to think about the work?

HD: That’s always hard. Especially right now, I don’t always have enough time to think about the work as much as I would like. Although comparatively sometimes I research, write and think so much about new work that it starts to paralyze me and I can’t actually make the jump into making the work. So I probably just fluctuate between extremes. Right now, I feel like I just have to make decisions and not over think things, which is a struggle for me, it’s all about acting rather then thinking.

“I'm interested in photography and the way it falls short.”

LK: Do you think you are making work you are happy with?

HD: I think I am. [Laughs] it’s hard to know sometimes. I never show work that I’m not happy with. Other times you think you are making work that you feel happy about but you look at it a month later and it is like “maybe I’m not so happy with it.” Doesn’t that happen to you?

LK: Yeah, it totally does. It can be hard to be aware of the work sometimes especially when you have multiple things on the go all at once. And it seems like you are having to do the practical side of being an artist as well with applying for shows, grants, residencies etc...

HD: Yes, for sure [Exclaims]. Emailing over and over and waiting for replies is no fun. Proposal writing is alright but it can be stressful at time. Shipping art is probably the most stressful thing in the entire world – in terms of being an artist anyways [Laughs]. No one ever tells you that. My dad’s hobby is woodworking so he made me this beautiful crate for shipping my work to Toronto, which I am so thankful for. But they don’t tell you how hard it is to actually get someone to ship art, no shippers want to take on the liability, because it’s “one of kind or priceless” or whatever, although my work is photography, so actually its inherently very reproducible [laughs] . But I need to get my work somewhere so you essentially almost have to lie about what the contents are, I used the term decorative goods, I don’t even know what that means, but it worked. Also, for my show in Calgary I’m packing all these sculptural works, stuffed body fragments, in my suitcase and flying with it as a checked bag. I feel tempted to leave a note of apology in case some poor airport worker searches my bag and is terrified and confused by what they find.

Photo Contribution by Adam Kelly

LK: Let’s talk about your piece you submitted for the Platform multiples. There’s a bit of a performative aspect to it...

HD: Yeah, what I included in the multiples collection was a piece that was a photograph of a friend of mine. I took photos of her and then I printed one life-size on fabric. I then re-photographed her behind, interacting and manipulating the photograph of herself. I guess this kind of was one piece that was a starting point for my interest in implicating a performance in the work. The woman is interacting with her own represented body, suggests a bit of a struggle with her own body, but then also with her own represented image. It was kind of an intense photo shoot, because I was actually asking the model to do something quite physical and emotional.

Untitled, inkjet print, 2016 (Platform Multiples submission)

LK: Where did the use of fabric arrive in your work?

HD: It started out with a photo I made a couple years ago titled Hidden Child, Shrouded Mother. The work was based off these hidden mother portraits from the 18th century. Around that time, shutter speeds were too long to take photographs of children because they move too much. In order to take studio portraits of kids they would cover their mothers in fabric while the child would sit on their lap and they would hold them still. I was really inspired by these portraits so it led me to making work from that. I was interested in this tension between the presence and absence of the mother figure within the photographs. The idea of being physically present but the camera “fails” to entirely document the subject. Something being there but it is hidden at the same time. I started to make photographs were the subject was hidden by fabric photographs of the landscape that they were within. That’s the moment, I introduced fabric, and I have been kind of obsessed ever since. For a while I had been interested in layering images through a process of re-photography and printing on fabric allowed for a lot more versatility. The fabric is a textural, moldable, flexible surface that you can do so many different things, while maintaining the image, as opposed to a photo paper, where once you make a form/ action with the image the image is forever altered.

Photo Contribution by Adam Kelly

LK: And you’ve been using this same kind of fabric for the newer work?

HD: Yes, it’s a nice silky almost spandex fabric and mimics skin in a really beautiful and grotesque was, especially when its re-photographed, the way the light plays off of it I think works really well.

Photo Contribution by Adam Kelly

LK: In the new work, you are taking on more tasks by photographing body parts, then printing on fabric and then sewing them into more solid forms and them re-photographing them.

HD: That’s right. My process for creating images is always really repetitive and cyclical. Sometimes I don’t know when to stop. When a photograph of a three-dimensional body is taken, it becomes a two-dimensional, then I take those images and print them and make objects/ sculptures from them, sometimes I then re-photograph them and present them as flat-images once again. There is always this back and forth between the object and the image. The work becomes this awkward failure associated with that process. The way the camera fails. Its this searching to create a true representation of a body—and there isn’t one. We can only see our own bodies- in totality- through mirrors and photographs. We create this false two-dimensional understanding of our own bodies. Do you ever think about that? We’ll only ever see images of ourselves, that’s pretty fucked. What does your body look like? We’ll never really know that. I’m always really interested in the inaccuracy of the image. I attempt to make work that hopefully pushes people to consider what they are actually looking at. We often look at photographs and think of them as this window into the world it depicts. But I guess I am interested in always considering a photograph for what it is, an object, an image, a representation.

"When we look at ourselves in the mirror and in photographs we create a false two-dimensional body. You have this understanding of who you are and it changes based on these images—whether through mirror or photographs. I think that creates this idea of not having a sense of yourself or not being sure of your own body."

LK: How did you transition from working with models to making work with yourself?

HD: Yeah, with this work I was more interested in grounding it within myself. In the past my work was more about this other, probably male, maybe societal force that was responsible for these fragmented, distorted depictions of women’s bodies. With the newer work I guess I am interested in this process that occurs within our own minds, and how we apply these almost violent acts of representation on our own bodies. Obviously this is in part from external pressures and societal norms, but I think this work has less blame and is more insular and self-reflective. Also, when I am making work about the aggressive acts of fragmented representations of women, it feels wrong to perpetuate this act by working with other women’s bodies. By making these kind of messed up self-portraits I think I am taking ownership over the act, and the image.

Installation View. I Never Recognized Her Except in Fragments, installation view at The New Gallery. Photo by Ashley Bedet.

LK: You mentioned in your statement your work is centered mainly on women how did you decide to take a gendered approach?

HD: I realize what I’m concerned with in the work is not just an issue for women. There are flaws in the way men are represented as well, but I think the issues there are quite different. As a women, I can more relate to and see issues in the way women are depicted. And I think the work is more poignant, because of the personal and gendered approach.

Installation View. I Never Recognized Her Except in Fragments, installation view at The New Gallery. Photo by Ashley Bedet.

LK: How did you generate the title for your upcoming show “I never recognized her except in fragments?”

HD: It is a quote directly drawn from a Camera Lucida, a text by French theorist Roland Barthes. He wrote about photographs of his recently deceased mother and the experience of looking at them. Its a very emotional and beautiful piece of writing. He talks about how he looks at photos of his mother and he recognizes parts of her but it’s not actually her; he can’t find her within the photos expect in fragments, and he addresses this falsity in the image that I related with.

Installation View. I Never Recognized Her Except in Fragments, installation view at The New Gallery. Photo by Ashley Bedet.

LK: What does “fragments” mean to you?

HD: It’s a word I use a lot. The way I see women being represented is often fragmented. There is not a whole or a sense of agency to the women, to the body. It very much presented only in parts. I think I talk a lot about this disjointed way women are portrayed—not in whole but in bits and parts. In that sense, the word applies really well.

LK: What’s an example in contemporary life that is a testament to the “fragmented body”?

HD: Well, it’s not a new topic, it’s occurred throughout history. Mass media is a big contributor to where we see this idea and it’s become this overall societal issue. I always get nervous when I talk about mass media because I don’t want the work to become just this one-liner critique of the fashion industry or something, I think its more complex then that. Although at the same time, I do feel like when I look back at fashion magazines I loved as a teenager, a lot of the issues of representation I am addressing are incredibly present there. I also definitely observe the fragmented body a lot in Instagram and our more personal representations, its definitely pervasive.

Installation View. I Never Recognized Her Except in Fragments, installation view at The New Gallery. Photo by Ashley Bedet.

LK: Do you think the fragmented body is from our own doing and not entirely external?

HD: I think it happens in our own heads all the time and it’s within the mechanics of a photograph. When we look at ourselves in the mirror and in photographs we create a false two-dimensional body. You have this understanding of who you are and it changes based on these images—whether through mirror or photographs. I think that creates this idea of not having a sense of yourself or not being sure of your own body.

LK: Where do you see yourself heading with your work in the foreseeable future/?

HD: [She ponders] I don’t really know. For know I’ll just keep building and pushing from what I’ve already made. I want to keep thinking more sculptural and play more with install. But I’m happy with where I’m going and I’ll just keep following my instincts.

LK: If you had a life motto what would it be?

HD: Make art! With everybody!

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