Sophie Castonguay

Misinformed Informants: You took the words right out of my mouth

When I watch a performance, I’m fascinated from the moment it begins: the moment that the performers assume their stage personas and then, the moment they return to being their own selves. I work within these tensions. I stretch out at the opening and push back into the end. I go back and forth within a performance which never starts, and the anticipation of an ending which never arrives.

Sophie Castonguay creates a performance where she is the director and the audiences are the performers. Under her direction of spoken words, she creates moments of expectation, choosing and delegating the role played by each person. In this performance, she constructs the impossibility of removing representational spaces, regardless of how insignificant these spaces are.



Canada
https://www.sophiecastonguay.ca/

Sophie Castonguay studies the subjectivation of gazes and cultural conditioning. She creates devices using the voice of the artist as an outside voice for the piece. Using narrative modes she attempts to create interference in the reception of the work and forces the spectator to question their position. Her work has been shown in Europe (Paris, Cologne, Basel) and in Quebec (L’œil de Poisson, Axe Néo-7, La Centrale, Dare-Dare, Dazibao). She holds a master’s degree in creation from UQÀM’s École des arts visuels et médiatiques (2007).


Works


Writing


Engagements


BOOKS & OTHER EPHEMERA

Artist Orange

Just as a performance artist uses their body as their medium, this is a fragrance composed entirely of the orange tree: fruit, leaves, bark, roots, and flowers. Artist Orange performs itself.

Top Notes

neroli, blood orange

Middle Notes

fresh orange juice, petit grain

Base Notes

orange twig, orange seed