Laura
Demers

You just hold your breath

Meech Boakye, Alex Borkowski + SHELL LIKE, Olivia Boudreau, Julien Fisher, IvanovStoeva, Jovian, Izzy Mink, Celia Perrin Sidarous, Laurence Pilon

the plumb
July 1 - 27, 2021


for more documentation, visit theplumb.ca 

view a talk organized by Le Labo (in FR)

From lavish roman baths, to natural geothermal springs, to chlorinated waters of public natatoriums, humans have long sought democratic spaces dedicated to rejuvenation, gathering, and leisure. Wet architectures can offer the novel promise of rest, community, and sensuous pleasure, all necessary escapes from toil, entrenched individualism, and the overall feeling of profound disconnect that seemingly prevails in our current world. These spaces also open up possibilities for envisioning a shared corporeality, and experiences of liminality and transformation.

You just hold your breath is an exhibition that focuses on aesthetic experiences of bathing, swimming and states of bodily immersion, invoking the porous and soluble relationships that exist between self and environment. Together, the works included in this exhibition create a moist ecosystem where fluid fantasies, rituals of self-care and corporeal rejuvenation, ethics and problematics of "purity”, and the history of baths as sites of public intimacy are foregrounded.

read the full exhibition essay