gallery

L’arbre généalogique
[The Family Tree]
1999 - 2000

To commemorate the beginning of the new millennium and to reconnect in her own way with the universal and ageless symbol that is the family tree, Dominique Laquerre asked her family to take part in this project. Children hands, adult hands, senior hands have cut over a thousand leaves in copper, all different, all imperfect and deeply human. These leaves were affixed on trees in the Chesterville woods in the spring of 1999 and taken down in the spring of 2000. During this one-year cycle, the copper leaves were painted by the weather and, in the end, came to resemble the real leaves they were meant to evoke. Every month, the artist took pictures of the changes in this symbolic landscape and made them available on the web, thus allowing people to access this fragile, intimate and private site located over a kilometre away from any road. To see the Family Tree, please visit www.oculiartes.org.

A mural made from the thousand leaves of the family tree was presented in Rouyn-Noranda, Montreal, Trois-Rivières (Quebec) and Pau (France).

The artist signed and sold 100 numbered leaves of the family tree to self-finance the project.

The “Art in Nature” section contains additional information about this project.

Translated by François Couture