Chiara Pergola - ParЖour
La chambre blanche is delighted to host Italian artist Chiara Pergola for the fifth year of the exchange program with Rad’Art art center in Mercato Saraceno Italy. This site-specific residency opens on August 27 from 5 :00pm to 7 :00 pm. Using a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, Chiara Pergola presents a work called ParЖour (reads ‘’parjour’’).
Chiara Pergola’s research is linked to the idea that the artistic production is a way of tracing the mutual influence between subject and the context.
For her residency at la chambre blanche, her artistic approach unfolds in two parts. First, exploring German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s (1892 – 1940) notion of the marking of a territory, she will wander the streets taking pictures of the urban narrative: letters from signs and information boards. According to Benjamin, just like animals marking their territory, humans also use a form of ‘’marking’’ to retrace their steps in their daily life.
She breaks down the words, picking only letters. Refusing to use lettering specific to multinationals, for instance the M of Macdonald, Pergola thus makes sure that the markings collected give the most faithful image of the cultural reality of her exploration field.
In the second phase, in keeping with her process initiated in Italy, Chiara Pergola brings her research forward by translating an excerpt from the Tao Shījīng. According to Pergola, this very ancient Chinese poetic text, when translated, goes trough a transformation that reflects the personality and the cultural background of the translator. There are as many interpretation of the Tao as there are people who translate it.
Determined to enjoy fully the freedom that a residency at la chambre blanche affords her, the artist intends to experiment and enrich her approach through several interactions with the citizens of Québec City.
