Galerie d’art du Parc

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Booby Trap

In 2015, I made a series of sculptures called "HYPERland" illustrating the utopia promised by the "liberal democracy" and the dystopia that is rather created by the market and financial capitalism, at least for some. Pierre Foglia had written in La Presse at the occasion of a visit in China for the Beijing Games in a context where "a revolution" was feared, a phrase that has always remained in my memory: "...there is no revolution where there are Walmart". This hyperbole describes this global system that is set up where the consumption wins every dimension of our existence by enslaving us and giving us a false sense of freedom and happiness. We produce, we consume, and we calm our anxieties with shots of antidepressants and sleeping pills. Children are educated as future producers / consumers. Insidiously, we have put ourselves willingly in a society of self-monitoring and dependency, be it by GPS, social networks, intelligent technology and the propaganda of fear created by the ruling elite. Everything seems more and more calculated, organized, monitored, regulated... Everything looks square on a round planet. The questions that I ask myself in relation with the theme of the sculpture Biennial: are we freer or are we, on the contrary, in a state of servitude (falsely) voluntary? What happened to the spiritual dimension of the human being? With the Booby Trap project, I plan to continue my research initiated with HYPERland by building in the exhibition room a kind of dead end ship where every human being mechanically performs what he is enslaved to do in order to operate this labyrinthic space moving in "protected area". Happiness, work, social life and private life will be regimented and controlled ... for better or for worse?

In your artistic itinerar

y, what perspective connects you to the Brave New World theme?

In early adulthood, I read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It was in the late 90s and as the years pass, the less the novel by Huxley seemed to move away from fiction. It coincided with the moment when I felt that I was asked to "fit" into the "system" and that book was somehow one of the triggers of my career as a self-taught artist, the impetus I needed to start. It was a confirmation of my refusal to jump into the big productivity machine. Over the years, I have mellowed, but the substance has remained present in my projects; this quest to bring out humanity in a more and more material world. Among other things, that's what had pushed me to go to China to carry out a project on the millions of migrant workers in the factories. I wanted to put a human face on our consumer society; humanize this huge anthill with a sterile look.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1980 in Sainte-Émélie-de-l’Énergie, Karine Giboulo lives and works in Montreal. Over the last decade, she has worked in a variety of mediums, from painting and works on paper to sculpture. Giboulo gained particular attention for her miniature dioramas of human environments. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the US. Karine Giboulo is the 2011 recipient of the prestigious Winifred Shantz in ceramic. In 2009, she's awarded the second prize in the Impulse competition of the PULSE NEW YORK International Fair. Her work has been supported by the Arts Council of Canada and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Her recent works, What is my name, All you can eat and Le Village Électronique, are part of the collections of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinburg, Ontario), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Quebec, Canada) and of 21c Museum (Kentucky, USA).