Illusion of the Self exhibition at Dorchester’s Keillor House Museum

During the summer of 2024, the Keillor House Museum in Dorchester becomes the setting for an unprecedented artistic exploration. Conceptualized by myself, a visual artist, the exhibition Soif d’illusion/Illusion of the Self is the fruit of a conversation with Keegan Hiltz, director of the museum, aimed at revaluing the historic collections through contemporary artistic practices.

Exhibition runs July 13 to September 2, 2024

Opening: Saturday, July 13, 2024, 12 pm – 4 pm

Keillor House Museum, 4974 Main St, Dorchester, NB

Presented in this Georgian-style mansion built circa 1813, the exhibition brings together works by five artists: Kyle Alden Martens, Karen Tam, Massimo Guerrera, Natasha Sacobie and myself. Through a play on translation, the bilingual title invites us to reflect on how our self-perception can be shaped by illusions and deep-seated desires.

The conceptual framework of the exhibition is based on the theories of psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961), in particular that of the layers of the human psyche. In his therapeutic practice, Jung encouraged his patients to explore their relationship with their domestic space in order to better understand their inner dynamics. The Keillor House Museum is the perfect place for this exploration of the parts of ourselves that lie beneath the surface, that don’t appear at first glance.

Indeed, the ornate spaces of Keillor House Museum, witness to an ambition to conceal the modest origins of its founder and typical of Victorian attitudes, provide an ideal setting for exploring the complexities of personal and collective identity. Each artist approaches this theme with a distinct sensibility:

• Kyle Alden Martens uses clothing as a metaphor for fit and integration, exploring how queer bodies occupy and transform domestic space.

• Karen Tam recreates objects that interrogate Chinese historical narratives and diasporic identities.

• Massimo Guerrera, a pioneer of relational art, reflects on human interaction through a series of sculptures on the dining room table.

• Wolastoqiyik First Nation artist Natasha Sacobie creates works informed by her ancestors and linked to future generations, combining traditional materials with contemporary modes of expression.

• Guillaume Adjutor Provost, known for his interdisciplinary installations addressing class consciousness and vernacular aesthetics, assembles a corpus of seemingly utilitarian ceramics in the seasonal workers’ room.

By bringing together these multiple voices, the exhibition offers a reflection on domestic space as a site for the projection of real and fabricated identities. The Keillor House Museum enables artists to integrate their work into narrative-laden spaces, creating an immersive experience for the viewer.

Read the full press kit for the exhibition and the artists here.

Guillaume Adjutor Provost is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator who experiments with exhibition forms, collections, text, and curating, and has taught sculpture at the Université de Moncton since 2022. Provost is the curator of the Illusion of the Self exhibition.

This article was transformed from a press release sent by Elise Pelletier on July 11, 2024.

Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the name of the municipality where the exhibition is located. We updated the headline at approximately 7:20 p.m. on Tuesday, July 16, 2024.