Gravitas
2007
In autumn of 2006, Raymonde April began restoring the embossed wall coverings
in her apartment of the Plateau Mount-Royal. The coats of paint accumulated
since the Twenties by the successive tenants had to be carefully scraped from
the porous surface. Starting as a past time a bit obsessive, this act revealed
a vast world palimpsest, which was quickly connected with archeological excavations
calling upon the memory of images but by also creating new ones that retrace
our evolution.
It is with a traditional camera of format 8 X 10 that the various states of
the walls are documented. The exhibition presented at Galerie Donald Browne
in Montreal includes self-portraits and previously unseen past images.