For its inaugural fall exhibition, TOPO presents in its showcase room of the Pôle de Gaspé the project Le Great White North, an installation by artists Eduardo Pérez Infante and Sophie Kuijper Dickson.
With the participation of the public, TOPO’s showcase will be transformed as a gift shop where the artists design, produce and sell souvenir mugs to reconsider the narrative structures of Quebec identity as mediated through such objects and associated myths. Through this playful engagement, the two artists question the ways in which souvenirs and the images that they circulate construct and export ideas of belonging, including certain histories while concealing others.
Le Great White North expects to open a space for reflecting upon and challenging the aestheticization, commodification and reductionist simplification of the Quebec experience that is mediated by the images sustained by these objects. The installation investigates souvenirs as cultural artifacts that accumulate on shelves at home, thrift shops and garage sales as enduring and familiar items that double as an archive of the myths of the past and a tool in building the imagined present.
The installation-boutique offers a first corpus of original souvenir mugs created by the artists that remix and reimagine the iconic images that have historically been used in the branding of Quebec culture. To expand this collection, the artists will hold open workshops where the public will be invited to join them in the creation of new mugs, as a collective attempt at remembering otherwise.
All mugs will be on sale for $ 20 (cash only).
Throughout the exhibition, we invite you to use #legreatwhitenorth to share images from your own archives of Quebec souvenir memorabilia, as well as of your mug creations and your experience of the installation!
