Caroline Hayeur
in Maria

EXHIBIT

ADOLAND

Vieux-Quai Park (Auberge Mowatt) | 550 Boulevard Perron | Maria
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Caroline Hayeur, Montreal, Québec | art.carolinehayeur.com

Since the 1990s the artist-photographer has been exploring questions of social structure, of generations, of emerging cultures, of traditions revisited, of belief systems and of movements of life.

Caroline Hayeur’s work belongs to an esthetic of connection. Her quest is for places and forms of socialization – friendship, families, plural communities – in the spirit of the documentary and the humanist portrait. She welds certain relationships by provoking or by highlighting situations of closeness. Many of her projects have begun as artist residencies either in Québec and abroad. Adoland echoes previous series such as Humanitas, Dwell – Beyond My Room, Dwell – This Is My Home, My Sleepless Nights and Festive Ritual – Portraits of the Montreal Rave Scene.

EXHIBIT AT RENCONTRES

ADOLAND

Carried out between 2011 and 2014, the ADOLAND series takes the teenager’s bedroom as its theater of operations. Caroline Hayeur set a temporal back-and-forth in motion through the adolescence, current or past, experienced by her 30 “models.”

Following some field research – which she’s accustomed us to in her earlier projects – on the one hand she made the acquaintance of a number of today’s teenagers, who opened the door to their lairs. A place for a projection of the self, for building, and finally for affirmation and emancipation, that room is an exhaustible fund of narratives that the artist’s collaborators agreed to reveal.

On the other hand, she has adults look back on their younger years and gains access to memories that to one degree or another have been buried. Her research reveals that the bedroom of a number of these ex-teenagers has been preserved like a mausoleum in which the decor and its artefacts are now part of an untouchable family patrimony. All the parents mourn in their own way the departure of their offspring.

An archeology of different times, but of the same passage to adulthood, the teenager’s room is fertile ground for photography. The models are mainly from Greater Montreal and other areas of Québec. Joining the photographs is a series of videos in which the notion of the portrait is also explored.

In the same 2011-2014 period, Caroline Hayeur saw her own teenagers leave home. From the personal, she expands the point of view with Adoland, making of it a true poem in visuals and sound.