This is a project of table top exhibitions held in church bazaars. The invited participants are artists and writers whose work has engaged with belief in various ways. Many of them have dealt with their own personal experiences of organized religions, but without staging a rejection or a celebration. Rather, there is a translation process involved.
The desire to hold these 2- or 3-person table top exhibitions in bazaars stems from a project I had organized with others at HomeShop, which was a series of interventions in the Farmers Market in Beijing called “True and False”. In Montreal, I felt the church bazaars held a similar potential for art works to rub against and settle beside a variety of other value scales. Of course, there are diverse publics, the most basic of types being those who are there for the church and those who show up primarily for the art. However, in either case, the work is discussed and introduced by the presenters, and so a negotiation has already started. There is a plurality of entry points in the selected works, and so interactions over the table can be unpredictable and yet down to earth.
This project remains unfinished. Its first two iterations took place in cooperation with the artist-run centre Verticale in the city of Laval, Québec in November 2019. The next two iterations were planned for April and May 2020, with Verticale again, and with articule artist-run centre. The series has not been cancelled, but is on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Though all art exhibitions, as well as any other social activity, are and will be affected by the outbreak, it seemed poignant to think about the depth of this crisis for religious and spiritual gatherings. Churches and many other places of worship serve an older demographic that is especially vulnerable to the worst of the coronavirus. So it may take a while, or may take a different form, to finally realize this project.
Stay tuned…
The first edition of Credos was held on the first weekend of November 2019 at the Armenian Evangelical Church of Montreal in Laval. On display were:
Opioid Wall Book by Cliff Eyland (drawings)
non-visible by Asako Iwama and Derrick Wang (video)
Stretching Exercises by Michael Fernandes and Craig Leonard (book)
Visitors were invited to contribute a translation of the instruction poetry in Stretching Exercises.
The second edition of Credos was held on the last weekend of November 2019 at the Armenian Community Centre of Laval. On display were:
Earrings by Mina Hedayat (wearable objects)
Painting Hijabs by Mina Hedayat (paintings)
Plant Hijabs by Mina Hedayat (sculpture)
Stretching Exercises by Michael Fernandes and Craig Leonard (book)
A presentation by Michael Eddy on the origins of the Credos project.
A lecture by Vincent Bonin on the work and life of Michel Journiac.
See more at Credos 3