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Atypical and personalized workspaces, artists' studios are intriguing. Beyond the myths, this series of articles opens on places that make possible, that mark and that orient artistic production. The foray also reveals a little-known cartography of Montreal, and nearby, where creation is born despite adversity. Last of three articles: art and life. She had warned us not to enter the address in the GPS, it would say “nowhere”. Carla Hemlock's warm welcome belies Tech's stubbornness in not locating her fabric store in Kahnawake. His works are born in the back room.

Sober and impersonal, the place slips away. The attributes are in the small details of colored threads, sewing accessories or concealed from view, in battle in containers. However, this workshop has seen people come from afar, from the rest of Canada, the United States and Europe.

"I'm known for my quilts," says the Mohawk artist. Spread out, catalogs of prestigious museums, including the Smithsonian in Washington, and a myriad of honorary ribbons attest to international recognition, which came before that of Quebec. She doesn't mind. Last year, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal exhibited one of his textile works, spectacular with its long ribbons.

While the integration of works into the artistic milieu is important, upstream creation often happens without justification, as if out of necessity. While the dedicated space that is the workshop concretizes its existence, it happens that art mixes with the domestic space and family life.

The borders, physical and symbolic, of the studio become porous in the practice of several artists. Carla Hemlock brings her art home to work late into the night. “In the majority of homes in our community, someone is doing something. My mother loved to knit, sew clothes. My grandmother made quilts. And the other women in our family were pearling, ”explains the one who takes her knowledge from her predecessors. “It's part of life, of who we are. »

Transmission also characterizes the approaches of Nicole Fournier and Karen Tam, which nothing at the beginning brought closer. An interdisciplinary artist and mother, the former links art to community engagement, advocating a greener future. Creation takes over the corners of her house and her land in Saint-Laurent, where she has lived for 25 years.

Returning to the family nest after advanced studies in England, Karen Tam set up her studio in the basement of her parents' semi-detached house, in the borough of Anjou. "Often, I think I should have a real studio to become a real artist", admits with a laugh the artist who however has no real plan to leave. Why would she do it when her parents are her closest collaborators, often contributing to her works?

The experience of these parents, Chinese immigrants who ran a restaurant in Rosemont for a long time, left a deep mark on his practice. "Growing up in this space, this place of cultural encounters, formed me as an artist and as a person, in several aspects", affirms the only child whose installations have probed for more than 15 years the Western perception of China and the cultures Asians.

In dialogue

Carla Hemlock works solo on her quilts, where she nevertheless highlights the contribution of her sisters and the traditions of her community. It updates its codes, thus honoring its own or revealing the violence perpetrated. To deal with delicate subjects, which are not lacking, where the colonization of the Aboriginal peoples has done, and still does, its wrongs, the comfort evoked by the quilt proves for her a vehicle of choice.

“It’s to create dialogue. My works show what people don't know or don't want to know. Whatever the subjects I address, it is to generate discussions, ”she says gently, pointing to a photo of one of her creations quoting George Washington’s words of assimilation.

Other examples celebrate pre-contact culture, pottery and tattoo motifs. Neophytes will only see the decorative aspect, which is moreover appreciable. Wise eyes will read more, a cultural resistance, identity. This rounded silhouette of a satchel, she says, is unique to the Mohawks, while each of the other five Iroquois nations has its own.

The same shape defines an ornate wooden handcrafted baby carrier that rests on the table. "We keep it here at the request of the family", underlines the one whose works find takers before they are finished. She cherishes the object made with her husband, her partner for 40 years. They had four sons who, in turn, ensure the descendants. It is for them that she asks the question: “Who will speak for nature? »

Biodiversity

The environment is a concern dear to Nicole Fournier. His land attests to this through experimentation; abundant vegetation grows, seemingly intractable in comparison with the neighboring houses, where well-trimmed grass predominates. She hates monocultures.

“In 2005, I removed the grass. I grew organic corn, but I also wanted to have a biodiverse system. I started with the three sisters, then I put medicinal plants”, recalls the one who, since then, has let this nature go. Or almost. On this June day, her friend Suzanne came to lend a hand to remove invasive Jerusalem artichokes among the rhubarb and raspberries.

After studying philosophy and art at Concordia, it was not until the turn of the 2000s that she chose herself as an artist, leading to a divorce. She left her job as a graphic designer in a corporate environment that exhausted her. “I repelled technology,” she insists, also evoking the buoy that was the feminist artist center La Centrale.

Over the years, a way of life takes shape, performance concepts emerge, such as Live Dining, combining food and sharing. The gestures are artistic and militant, in a spirit of ecovention. “I wanted to do something that celebrates solutions,” explains the artist who, head-on, challenges hyperproductivity and consumerism, his two sons in the adventure.

She distinguishes the purpose of her actions from the work of farmers and herbalists who must ensure a harvest. "I want to take my time and I want to react and see how I'm going to create," she illustrates, speaking of her tomato seedlings.

The plants, however, are partly intended for the residents, mostly immigrants, of Place-Benoit, where she has been involved for years with her organization InTerreArt. Growing seeds first integrated assemblages. Remains are visible in the house where his sons grew up and where artistic experimentation with nature took precedence over ordinary household chores, another sign of insubordination.

(Im)material cultures

Among the Tam, order and calm reign. The cozy atmosphere carries over to the basement, in the workshop. The boxes pile up with years of large-scale installations stored away. No production in progress for Karen Tam, who has accumulated several exhibitions in the last year, in Montreal and elsewhere in Canada.

This pandemic year has also awakened his experience of the racism seen during his childhood in his parents' restaurant. “I thought we had progressed, but it seems not,” she says referring to discriminatory acts against Asians. His eyes mist over his mask, which will stay in place.

His works evoke cultural misunderstandings, deconstruct stereotypes and reductive exoticism. “My art is about transmission or translation, even transcoding. As an artist, I seek to fill in the holes, to propose counter-narratives,” explains the one who knowingly enlists her parents for their ideas and their know-how.

“For me, the act of manufacturing, of working with the hands, is a form of knowledge, a way of knowing and sharing. In a sense, the bodily experience of doing allows access to a better understanding of the history of certain objects and material culture," she explains, listing her mother's skills in origami, calligraphy and painting, then from his father for carpentry, photography and finer assembly work.

Parents benefit from it, the memory of the gestures keeping alive the link with the traditions of China which they had to leave in the 1960s. They even ask for more of their daughter, especially the father, who, according to a museum director, essential when setting up his exhibitions.

He is currently documenting Montreal's Chinatown, which is also plagued by real estate and land speculation. Karen Tam supports citizen mobilization for its preservation. His grandmother, who does gardening at times, lives there. It is to her, moreover, that she pays tribute in a project presented in Toronto integrating Chinese vegetables. A sample of this crop grows in the backyard garden where the exchange concludes, barely shaken by the arrival of the parents. We left them fragrant flower in hand, gift from mother.