Hideous Intimacies

Artist: Stephanie E. Creaghan
Scenography: Natacha Boucher
Opening: Thursday June 20, 5:30 - 8:30pm
Exhibition: June 20 to August 3, 2019

“She always found making her bed difficult, because the process reminded her of sleep; the heaviness that imbued her arms as she swung the sheets overhead—half-mast—to reposition them, how all the fabrics’ movement seemed to slow down and hesitate, before settling back in place. This morning it took a while. She’d already been up for an hour, the sheets and pillows twirled into a nest, a prison. Her head propped up on the outermost ring, she looked at the ceiling, before dipping over and taking a sip of coffee from the cup off the edge of her bed, her torso like a comma, head-heavy. Like some kind of reservoir birdbath. Sip, sip.

 She was busy trying not to be sad about the whole 🀰 thing.  Whenever she thought about it, her stupid little eyes would shrink up, like coils springing back, ready to go forth and—whatever. She felt like such a sap. She’d spent one night with her. One. But this did not factor in the build-up. Dating 🀰, or effectively going on a singular date with her, had been like training for a half-marathon, transforming all that useless stasis-fat of just, like, staring at her, into slowly moving towards her, diverting the strength normally used to ocularly pine for her into actually moving her body closer to her body, interacting her, gulping back spit-laced wads of wild fear, hiccupping, and when she finally got her number, when she finally asked and received that “yes,” deep and heady, it resonated in her gut, it bloomed her hips, open, wide, welcoming, it made her feel fuller, made her body feel more like a body, thicker, with more dimension, corpulent and sensual, spreading out over everything she—

Spreading out is then what she set out to do, with her desire, to meter it out. She had to build stamina, to breed patience, in her sprinting heart. She had to melt down this bronze spear that beamed loud through her body, from the crest of her hair down to her hungry—“

Stephanie E. Creaghan is a Montreal-based writer, performance and video artist who makes work about how violence inserts itself into different forms of communication, combining different pathways (audio/visual/physical/written) of language to reveal latent forms of manipulation and the pain they generate, in order to bring to light the undiscussed/repressed. She is the co-founder/director of CK2 Gallery, and was co-founder/director of Gallery LOCK (2013-2014). She has exhibited her work in Montreal, Toronto, London (ON), Chicago, New York, and Prague, and has curated exhibitions in Montreal, Toronto, New York, and Austin. She has made commissioned work for Le festival de la poésie de Montréal, and has performed at the Darling Foundry, 8Eleven Gallery and Projet Pangée. She has completed two international residencies (betOnest, Stolpe/Oder, Germany, 2017, and Cow House Studios, Wexford, Ireland, 2013), and has been the recipient of grants from the Canada Council of the Arts, Le conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and from Concordia University. Her work has been published in LESTE Magazine, PANK Magazine, Permanent Sleep Press, and the Hypocrite Reader. She holds a BFA in Intermedia/Cyberarts from Concordia University. The artist would like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Recent Press
Allied Productions Inc.: The Lantern X LVNEA
Glamour Girl Magazine: Book Six — The Art of the Body: A Body of Art

Natacha Boucher experiments with the material and experiential aspects of scenography, conceived either as installation, as frame for performance or as storytelling device. She explores through eros and play; language and gesture; and the different experiences of time (natural/ historical /narrative), often subversively, always from a phenomenological understanding of our shared world. She obtained a Master's degree in Architectural History and Theory from McGill University; was awarded a Research-Creation in Architecture residency from The British School at Rome with a grant from the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec; and has produced large-scale contemporary art exhibitions for artists such as Ed Atkins and Jasmina Cibic at DHC/ART (now Fondation Phi) in Montréal.