The instagram residency project Eat, prey, lust is a satire on Western self-care. The members of the Gaslighting Joy collective, Sophie-Anne Bélisle and Fadwa Bouziane, one based in Montreal (QC) and the other in Squamish (BC), will have bouquets of flowers delivered to each other. The artists will use the bouquets as props in their performances to dialogue with each other on the platform.

In this project, each performance critiques Western self-care while offering absurd solutions to imagine more radical forms of self-care. The Instagram residency will open with the idea of Eurocentric happiness that maintains the status quo of a colonialist patriarchal society, as theorized by Sara Ahmed. The artists will then observe how anger, an emotion usually perceived as negative, can instead be a form of care. This research is based on the text The Uses of Anger by Audre Lorde. The project will conclude with the theory of shame. Eat, prey, lust will focus on the different ways in which shame can be re-tamed to lead to auto-erotic desires, as written by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Paul B. Preciado.

This collaboration is a project of friendship and care in a context where interpersonal connections are often overlooked by the capitalist and patriarchal system. The artists' practice responds to events surrounding the Black Lives Matters movement, taboos regarding single parenthood, and other injustices that have become even more glaring with the pandemic. Like many other artists in precarious situations, Sophie-Anne Bélisle and Fadwa Bouziane have entered survival mode and their ability to be creative has been drastically weakened. This project is a way to instill hope and stimulate a vital desire to create.

Gaslighting Joy is a collaboration between artists Sophie-Anne Bélisle and Fadwa Bouziane. In the past, they have worked on projects integrating art into public space, notably for the 1-800-POESIE project at the 16th Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine in Trois-Rivières and État/Transmutation, an installation created as part of the 5th edition of Art Souterrain in Montreal. By integrating artistic micro-interventions into their daily lives, they create spaces for redefining happiness that resist the norms imposed by patriarchal capitalism.

Follow La Centrale on Instagram to see the project

Picture : Fadwa Bouziane, bouquet 1a (tiré du projet Eat, Prey, Lust), 2021 & Sophie-Anne Bélisle, bouquet 1b (tiré du projet Eat, Prey, Lust), 2021.