Olivia Boudreau is an artist whose practice combines video and performance in works that explore perception, temporality and the visible through the long take and more recently narrative structure and editing. Her video installation L’Étuve—a large scale study of five women in a steam room—was a focal point of the last Québec Triennale at the Musée d’art contemporain in 2011. Boudreau has done residencies in Europe and exhibited at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Galerie de l’UQAM, Optica, Dazibao, Katherine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects in Toronto and at Le Fresnoy in France. She was the recipient of the Prix Pierre-Ayot de la Ville de Montréal in 2011.

Video, colour, 9 min. 4 sec.
First presented as a nighttime event in the window of the Centre de diffusion de la maîtrise en arts visuels de l’UQAM, Montréal, 2004.
Courtesy of the artist.

The video begins with a close-up of a tartan skirt. Its pattern of black, red, grey and white fill the screen completely. The skirt is pulled up very slowly to reveal a pair of thighs, light-skinned and slightly parted. The skirt is then slowly lowered until all that is visible is the coloured fabric. This action is repeated with different inflections. The camera’s view is fixed and frontal. Our view is located at about the height of a keyhole. The model is standing. Between the still, statue-like legs can be seen only the white of the background. Sometimes the gesture is performed mechanically, without feeling, other times it appears seductive and sensuous. Sometimes the skirt is pulled partway up, other times it looks as if it is going to surpass the top edge of the frame. Narrative is reduced to the barest components—a tartan skirt, a pair of thighs, the gap between them, a repeated act of revelation and concealment.

Video, colour, 22 min. 14 sec.
First presented in Paramètre 2003, Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal, 2004.
Courtesy of the artist.

A woman stands in the middle of a white space. The room is brightly lit, white and depthless. She wears a red T-shirt, red pants, and black pumps. Beside her, a small dog with floppy ears trails about a red leash and occasionally shifts position. The woman’s head and neck are cropped from view. Without cue, she removes her T-shirt and drops it on the ground besides her, revealing a pale tummy, red bra, and at one point the hair in her armpits. She looks self-possessed and at the same time exposed. She will cycle through a series of poses: arms bent above the head; arms down, standing at half-profile; one hand to the hip, elbow out; both hands to the hips; facing forward, arms raised again; and so on. The dog, oblivious, looks around, sniffs the air, dozes. The woman holds the poses but does not appear to be totally invested in them. She adjusts and relaxes, shifts weight from one hip to another, scratches her thumb with the tip of her finger. Cultural references come easily, and with them possible scenarios. As time passes, her body begins to tire. The black high-heeled pumps assert themselves. The high heels undermine her composure. They lead the eye up the body to the shoulders, where it comes against the border of the frame and skips down to the dog again. The discarded shirt makes a red puddle in the foreground. In this unblinking atmosphere, the slightest movements can become significant.

Video of a performance recorded live, sound, colour.
Mini DV cassettes transferred to hard drive. 24 hours looped.
First presented in Itinéraire Bis, Centre Clark, Montréal, 2005.
Courtesy of the artist.

This video recorded the entirety of the artist’s performance, which consisted of the artist sitting in an armchair for 3 periods of 8 hours. The video camera was placed in front of the artist and armchair but remained invisible to the public who could see her only through a window and in profile. The image of the artists however was retransmitted and projected onto a window at street level. In the recording of the performance the armchair is shown straight from the front and looks well used and homely. The woman is not so much sitting but collapsed there (she has hooked her right arm across her upper body to make a makeshift pillow for her head). She appears to be resting but her eyes are open. The room is evenly lit and otherwise devoid of incident. The woman looks like she may have slunk down from an earlier sitting position. She wears a long, brown strapless dress. Her hair is brushed to one side, making her look boyish and feminine, and ordinary. She lifts her head up from the armrest and uses her other arm to prop her head up. She orients her gaze in a new direction. Time passes. She remains silent and still, blinking at a natural rhythm. She is not waiting, but she is not posing for the camera either. Her lowered gaze and sunken position suggest tiredness, collapse, deflation, but her face is very calm and inscrutable. She is wearing high-heeled sandals. She is alert, present in her body, but not fully there.

Dehors took place at Centre Clark, as part of Itinéraire Bis in 2007. It consisted of the artist sitting in an armchair for 3 uninterrupted 8 hour evenings. The video camera was placed in front of the artist and armchair but remained invisible to the public who could see her only in profile and through a window. The image of the artist was retransmitted and projected onto a window at street level.

The video presented here includes all 24 hours of the performance playing in a loop. It is the document of a performance but does not represent it as it was seen by the public (who experienced it live through one window and mediated via the video image projected on another glass surface). The video itself is both a constituent element of the performance and evidence of a process.

Video, sound, colour, 57 min. 3 sec.
First presented in Olivia Boudreau, Optica, Montréal, 2007.
Courtesy of the artist.

The video opens with the sound of crickets and a view of four cows grazing in a field. A thick white rope joins the artist to the only white cow in the grouping. She stands out in the landscape in boots and a pink dress. The rope is about 4. 5 meters in length. When the cow moves, she is forced to move with it, but not before making a moderate effort to keep the rope taught and to stick to her position. Her will shows through subtle gestures: when the cow stands still, she remains alongside it, but turns her entire body to face the camera; and if the rope has slackened, she walks in the opposite direction to regain some tension. The video joins a rapport (between animal and human) with a representation (of the self, of the landscape) in real time. The action is recorded in a single shot from a fixed position and presented without edits. When the group wanders deeper and deeper into the landscape, the artist (now almost invisible) attempts to lead the resistant animal back into the foreground. When the group exits the frame, the viewer is left to contemplate only the open landscape. The soundtrack is continuous and entirely diegetic and composed of the sound of crickets, distant birds, and the occasional report of a passing car.

Video, sound, colour, 56 min. 42 sec.
Courtesy of the artist.

Inside a changing room, a video camera is fixed to a tripod with its lens pointing toward the viewer. It takes some time to recognize that the camera is recording its reflection in a mirror because the mirror’s edges extend beyond the frame of the image. There is the sound of a shower running, and then stopping. A woman steps into the frame, dripping wet. Her head and legs are cropped out and only the side of her naked torso is visible. Picking up a towel, she begins to dry her body in a habitual flow of actions. When she has finished she will return to the shower and begin again. She will repeat this sequence, washing and drying herself, stepping into the frame and leaving, for almost an hour. It is an ever-renewing cycle. When she enters the frame the camera adjusts focus automatically and imperfectly. Bending over to dry her legs reveals fleeting glimpses of her profile in the mirror. Her head appears on one plane, her torso on another, producing a strange fragmentation—a partial staggering of her image. The plane of the mirror is at once obscured and revealed by her movements. When she leaves, the camera once again becomes visible. There is stillness and time to inspect the apparatus and the white square tiles in the shallow background. Meanwhile, the towel gets wetter and heavier, the hue of the skin slightly red. She betrays no emotion. The scene unfolds in a continuous take, but is filled with fragments: parts repeating, breaking up, differing and overlapping.

Video, colour, 4 hrs. 58 min.
First presented in Pelages. Olivia Boudreau, Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal, 2009.
Courtesy of the artist.

Pelages, refers to furs or coats of fur. The video is of a woman wearing a pair of white underwear and an ash-coloured hip-length fur coat, trying to remain on her hands and knees indefinitely. She is pictured in profile and spotlighted against a deep black background. Her body seems suspended in space. The video is silent. The fur on the coat ruffles continuously; a light, invisible breeze is blowing over her. Over time her effort to maintain this position becomes more and more apparent. She adopts brief, restful poses: letting her head hang; dropping to her elbows; sitting on her heels and resting her head on the ground. The more she tires, the more her poses appear languid. Sometimes her hair obscures her face. To be on one’s hands and knees is often thought to be equivalent to submission, but she looks calm and determined. Every so often she scratches her face, wiggles her toes (actions that seem spontaneous)—anything that will allow her to sustain the position. Sometimes, when she is still, the ruffling of the fur is the only sign that this is a moving image.

Video, colour, 46 min. 53 sec.
First presented in Dans l’intervalle, Galerie B-312, Montréal, 2010.
Courtesy of the artist.

The viewer is first presented with an image of thin white bands running horizontally across the frame. The title identifies the material: soft paper tissues, arranged in a neat pile and set lengthwise along the edge of a worn wooden surface. A hand reaches in from the top of the frame and delicately removes the top sheet at regular intervals. Each sheet is interleaved with the one below it. The pile of tissues creates a wall obstructing vision, and provoking a desire to see beyond it. As the pile is reduced, it reveals more and more of a flat and out-of-focus background. The mind weighs in with a flood of narrative possibilities and cultural associations. Meanwhile, the pile grows smaller. The action is literal. There is no soundtrack. The recording ends after the removal of the last sheet, when the viewer has had time to see the empty surface of the table and the pattern in the wall behind it.

Video of a performance recorded live, sound, colour.
Mini DV cassettes transferred to hard drive.1 of 150 hours presented each day, looped. Storage unit for 150 Mini DV cassettes, wood, glass.
First presented in Start curated by Christof Migone, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montréal, 2007.
Collection of the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University. Gift of the artist, 2013.

This except is from the video of the artist who recorded herself sitting on a bench during the gallery’s opening hours for a period of 5 weeks. The live image was projected onto a screen suspended in front of the artist and placed at the entrance of the space. Upon stepping into the room, visitors would be facing the hanging screen and a closely cropped image of the artist’s lower back and bottom projected onto the screen. Always, wearing the same jeans and sweater, she was distinguishable only by her continued presence and unbroken silence, which lasted 150 hours. A long and narrow cabinet on the wall held the one hundred and fifty digital tapes corresponding to each hour of the performance. At the end of each hour the artist would get up, replace the tape and place the used one in the cabinet, which functioned as a timeline. In this atmosphere of reflexive and protracted observation, a repertoire of minor gestures—legs crossed, arm rested across the opposite thigh, head cocked to one side—cued visitors to the visual inversion in the projected image. Visitors stood in the space, walked in between the camera and the artist, sat down beside her, touched her and attempted to engage in an exchange with her while she remained mute to all interruptions.

This video is part of the performance Salle C executed by the artist for the exhibition Start curated by Christof Migone and presented at the Ellen Art Gallery in 2007 (in what is today Room E). The artist recorded herself sitting on a bench during the gallery’s opening hours, for a period of 5 weeks. The live image was projected onto a screen suspended in front of her and placed at the entrance of the space. The camera, positioned at the level of the artist’s lower back, transmitted only that part of her body on the screen. The artist was accessible to the public when they stepped around the screen, but she did not interact with them. At the end of each hour, the artist would get up, remove the used tape from the camera, place it in a long storage cabinet on the wall and load up a new one.

Video, colour, 15 min. 56 sec.
First presented in Observations curated by Nicole Gingras, SBC Gallery, Montréal, 2008.
Courtesy of the artist.

Your Piece is a portrayal of a woman immersed in an intense, and seemingly solitary, emotional dialogue. The woman is shown in profile and from a low angle; her back turned to the camera ever so slightly. The framing is so tight as to make it impossible to see whether there is someone else in the room with her. The video is silent and thus is impossible to decipher what she is saying, or to whom. Whatever the situation is, she is absorbed in it. She looks ahead, looks down, looks away. Her features contort and change with waves of emotion. Her nose is red, she breathes through her mouth, she swallows. Every now and again she brings her hand to her face to wipe away tears. She speaks in bursts, thoughtfully and deliberately. Crisp white light falls on her back and heightens the candidness of the situation. With her eyes and forehead cropped from view most of the time, she teeters on the edge of anonymity. The camera records continuously, and in the process the viewer is turned into both a vicarious interlocutor and a kind of witness.

Video, sound, colour, 53 min. 3 sec.
First presented in Olivia Boudreau, Dazibao, Montréal, 2010.
Courtesy of the artist.

La Levée alternates between periods of light and periods of darkness. When the screen is dark only the occasional sound of a floorboard creaking is audible. At the flick of a switch a warm bedroom light goes on, revealing a wall with a low molding and a woman standing in quarter profile. Only the woman’s long, bare legs are in the frame, visible from the top of the thighs to the ankles. After standing still a moment, she gently pulls her underwear down to her knees and lets them fall to the floor around her ankles. She stands there, still and exposed in the half-light, and then the light is switched off again. A few minutes later, when the light turns on, the action is repeated. The camera keeps recording in the darkness and apart from the sounds described above, there is almost complete silence. The video fosters expectation in the viewer. Keeping her palms on her skin and her fingers taught and extended to remove her underwear makes the gesture appear sensuous. When the light is turned on, the soft, orangey light reaches her bare legs from a low angle. The right leg casts a shadow over the left, concealing the space between them.

Video, sound, colour, 22 hours.
First presented in Olivia Boudreau, Dazibao, Montréal, 2010.
Collection of the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University. Purchase, 2011.

Box is a continuous sound and video recording of a horse inside a stall. The camera is fixed and the scene is illuminated by natural light or obscured by its absence at night. The image, framed vertically, is a still life of the stall door as much as it is an unblinking portrait of the life behind it. The frame of the gate neatly lines the frame of the image. The gate is built of thin vertical slats reinforced by stronger planks of wood. A row of metal bars completes the upper half of the door; one bar is bent, creating a space wide enough for the horse’s snout to pass through. Leather harnesses dangle from the gate like an oversized knocker. Inside the stall, the horse moves around constantly, though its legs are invisible. The horse is very tall and has a shiny black coat. It neighs, smells the air, and shows interest in the world outside as it peers through a small window at the opposite end of the stall through which, when it is daytime, light streams. The camera captures the horse’s reaction to a man walking across the frame and exiting the barn with another horse. At 22 hours in length, the video runs through the night and almost total darkness. It is practically impossible to watch continuously; one happens upon it, observes, and moves on. There are changes in the quality and intensity of the light, accompanied by ambient sounds of all sorts.

Video, colour, 13 min.
First presented in Olivia Boudreau, Néon, diffuseur d’art contemporain, Lyon, 2011.
Courtesy of the artist.

The view is from the inside of a darkened room toward a wooden door that has been opened just a little. A narrow horizontal band of yellow—the space between the door and the doorframe—divides the image. The crack mimics the camera’s field of vision. Through the gap are registered brief glimpses of two children playing and chatting. They appear and disappear. What is constantly visible is a band of yellow wall, and the empty space across which the children are communicating. For a while, one of the children sways back and forth across the crack, and when he does this, his movements are vaguely reminiscent of an animal pacing. The other child appears less often. They take turns at engaging with each other and at spying through the crack, not unlike the viewer. They seem to be looking into the room more than at the camera. There are times when the children brush the door open a little while they are playing. Something here draws their attention but does not hold it. The height of the camera makes it seem as if they were peeking not just between the door and the doorframe, but also over the bottom of the frame of the image, into the space occupied by the spectator.

Performance with two performers.
Presented during the Gallery’s opening hours.
Performance made possible by the Leonard & Bina Ellen Program in Support of Artistic Production. Participants: Janick Burn, Christian Bujold, André-Marie Coudou, Jérémie Francoeur, Karine Gonthier Hyndman, Nadège Grebmeier Forget, Carol Jones, Christophe Payeur, Jade-Măriuka Robitaille, Anne Sabourin, Martin Vaillancourt.
Courtesy of the artist.

The project presents two performers: one standing observing and the other lying down on the floor. When the standing performer is tired, he or she in turn lies down thus indicating to the other performer to get up and stand. The performance consists in the alternating position of the standing and the lying body. The duration of the interval is determined by the desire of the first one to lie down when fatigue overtakes his or her body. One cannot predict the length of the interval, it can be a few minutes or an hour. When one performer lies down a few seconds passes before the other rises. Thus for a brief moment, the two bodies are lying side by side, and it is the visitor alone that is standing before them.

Video, sound, colour, 12 min. 41 sec.
Director of photography: Barry Russell
Editing and sound mixing: Luc Bouchard
Performers: Michelle Léger, Catherine Karas, Denis Lamonde, Mathieu Lepage, Marie-Claude Buteau, Véronique Raymond, Carol Jones
With the support of: Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Centre PRIM, Micro_Scope, Fonderie Darling / Quartier Éphemère
Courtesy of the artist.

In this video a gray-haired woman who is lying on a table and covered with a white sheet becomes the focus of a series of actions. A combination of fixed and panning shots show the woman alone at first, lying still, in an aureole of light. Then a young woman appears from the surrounding darkness walking towards the woman; she stops and turns around and looks at the camera then closes her eyes. The woman on the table opens her eyes and breathes. A younger man and an older man then appear at her side: they look down at her. Just after they bend down to embrace her, one man resting his head on the back of the other one, a photographer (played by the artist) interrupts by taking their picture with a Polaroid. The men then raise the sheet, examine the woman and exchange glances as she turns away somewhat anxious. At this point the flash of the camera is heard as another photograph is taken. The camera cuts away to two uniformed nurses who proceed to sponge the woman’s body with care. After they leave she is approached by a woman of similar age, who brings her hand to her face as they exchange glances of kind, mutual acknowledgement, and then the woman pulls the sheet over her face in a gesture associated with death. The camera cuts to a partial view of the sheet rising and falling in rhythm to the woman’s breathing.