art in nature

Ligne de vie
[Lifeline]
2004 - 06

In a wooded area that was clear-cut forty years ago, a few tall trees have been left, their tops towering over the young forest. They were spared because of the fences nailed to their trunks or because they served as cadastre markers. In the woods belonging to Dominique Laquerre, some of these trees are aligned like a “lifeline,” the backbone of a tale linking the territory to the people who have inhabited it, transformed it and exploited it in many different ways for more than a century.

Laquerre met several times with people who lived before her on the farm where she has been residing for more than 25 years. She collected photographs and information about its little history. She also walked through fields and woods with André Fréchette, a retired farmer who was born and raised in this house his grandfather built, to see the land’s memory traces before they vanish. From the first squatting families who lived on this still uncleared land to earn a living by making potash from the ashes, to the generations of farmers and lumberjacks, and finally the people escaping the city to come back to their roots in the ‘70s, this little chronicle, despite being far from exceptional, illustrates the ruptures and continuities in Quebecers’ rapport with nature.

The “lifeline” artwork follows a path on the course of which pop up the photographs of people from today and yesterday, embedded in several tall trees. Poses, clothes, framing and backgrounds suggest different eras, but also permanent features. For this process-based work, Laquerre adapted surgery techniques used in arboriculture. The artist inserts photographs printed on aluminum plates under the bark, so that the cambium can heal around them. Plate sizes, hardware and time of intervention are all selected so that the tree will accept the implant and continue to grow. Living tree and cultural artifact get used to each other, while time, sun, rain and cold do their alteration work. Revealed by silver salts or other digital alchemical processes, the photograph, in some cases taken long ago, begins its erasing process as soon as it arrives in the forest and might be back to the silence of the white plate after a few years.

Translated by François Couture