Running with the Argonauts is a space created to celebrate transformation. Inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estés and Maggie Nelson's essays, this work is a ritual work on internalized violence.

The installation highlights the traces of various ritual actions. The materials and techniques used honor the craft often associated with work traditionally relegated to women. This artisanal work here becomes a sacred gesture. There are three altars on which are presented the various elements necessary for a fictitious ritual. Broken porcelain, paper weapons and wilted plants: elements which bear witness to violence inflicted on purpose. They serve as proof of gesture and catalysts for a transmutation. It is a passage between fragility and ferocity. Each altar is surmounted by a diaphanous banner. It presents the imprint of the plants used in ritual: nettle, wild rose and raspberry bush. These thorny plants are symbolic of the resistance that this soft and dangerous space seeks to inspire.

“Inspired by the queer radical softness movement, I have explored a need for softness and empowerment; using vulnerability as a weapon.”

Clara Painchaud hold a Bachelor of Visual and Media Arts from UQAM and are an emerging artist living in Montreal. They have received, in 2019, the EAVM / Arprim print production grant as well as a grant from the McAbee Foundation which was granted during the Parameters IX exhibition in 2020. In their installation practice, they favor the printed arts and ceramics and are interested in theory and politics related to gender. They explore in their work the tension between violence and gentleness.

Photo credits: Clara Painchaud