Emilie Gervais
Émilie Gervais | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Movement | Internet artist, new media artist, conceptual artist |
Émilie Gervais is a Canadian new media artist based in Paris, France. Her work explores the relationships between internet, network culture, art and its mediation.[1] In the past, she has described herself as, "a starry background artist working with the internet, deleting and restoring stuff, interacting with stuff and people".[2]
Biography
[edit]Émilie Gervais; Born Gervais - Mother's last name who come from a small town call La Tuque (Mauricie) and LaPierre- Father's last name who come from Ville Saint-Laurent was born in Montréal, Canada. Her father (Robert LaPierre) is an architect, her mother (Danielle Gervais) is an elementary teacher and her brother (Charles G. LaPierre) a music producer/artist and marketing strategist. Émilie Grew up in Montreal, Saint-Lambert, Mont-Tremblant, San Francisco and the south shore of Montréal before moving to Aix-en-Provence for her master's degree. ,[3] Gervais attended Collège Charles-Lemoyne in Ste-Catherine, the Lycée Français in San Francisco, and different public schools. After graduating from Cégep de Saint-Laurent and Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Gervais pursued her studies at the École supérieure d'art d'Aix-en-Provence in France graduating with a DNAP (BFA) in 2011 and a DNSEP (Master) in 2013.[4]
Career
[edit]Emilie Gervais began working with computers from an early age. In a 2013 interview with Benoit Palop, she said that it was like playing ice hockey for her.[3] Working with gendered representations and power relations, Gervais applies a '90s internet aesthetic through works like, Blinking Girls (with Sarah Weis, 2012), backdoortrojangirl.net (2012), and the HTML collection of crowd-sourced works w-h-a-t-e-v-e-r.net, where contributors upload their own work under the dictate of "boy art" or "girl art". In 2014, Dazed, named her one of their ten favorite digifeminist artists.[5]
The uncompromising nature of Gervais' work carries a strong message. Feminist artists have found a unique venue for free expression in the internet and Gervais is at the leading edge of that movement. She inverts and distorts the language and aesthetics of the primitive internet to create art that is ultimately meaningful.[6] The work Blinking Girls (2012) deals with the similarities between women and video games characters. The main character, Tasha, is Eve from Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards,[7][8] rebranded as a pimptress who believes all men are women and all women must pimp themselves out online and own themselves in all of their submissions.[9]
Conceptually, Gervais is most interested in the creative process.[10] As part of her practice, Gervais tends to erase everything that she posts making her online presence both ubiquitous and ephemeral. Tracking down Gervais' artworks requires browsing archives, mirror sites or following her closely through social media. Most of her production is either deleted after it is "processed" or it "mutates" into something else.[11]
In 2015, she showcased Pizzasexual (2015), in the group exhibition Porn to Pizza, curated by Tina Sauerländer at the DAM Gallery in Berlin. The sculpture featured an iPhone displaying 3d rendered porn characters having a threesome in front of a pizza textured wall. The iPhone was embedded into an actual pizza. Visitors were invited to swipe through the digital images on display with their greasy fingers.[12]
Gervais' sensitivity to the physical object is further evidenced in the piece, Not Sure if Art or Copyright Infringement (2015), a digital painting based on an image of Princess Peach. The work, inspired by an internet meme, questions the distinction between art and copyright infringement.[13]
Curatorial Practice
[edit]In 2011, Gervais co-launched Art Object Culture[14][15] with Lucy Chinen. Art Object Culture was an online venue inviting artists to create new art objects from preexisting commercial products available from online stores. The idea was to expand the language of the art world by absorbing the products of new industries. The project was discontinued when the artists saw redundancy with the establishment of online art galleries by the corporate world.[16]
In 2013, Gervais and Félix Magal created Museum of Internet to archive new iconographies emerging from the web.[10] The project takes form under a website and a Facebook page. Images are added everyday increasing the data bank limitlessly. The contributions are curated by the artists but not censored except for the ones on Facebook. Museum of Internet is the internet caricaturing itself.[17]
Writings
[edit]In 2014, Gervais published A Letter to Young Internet Artists[18] on Animal New York in which she highlights that art is about information. The work was also exhibited in Offline Art: 'Your are not checked in', curated by Aram Bartholl, as part of Transmediale 2015.[19]
References
[edit]- ^ "About". Emilie Gervais. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
- ^ "Emilie Gervais Domain Gallery". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
- ^ a b "Using Net Art stuff as source material, she offers us a trippy 90s aesthetics internet experience. Creators". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
- ^ "GERVAIS Emilie". Ecole superieure d'art d'Aix-en-Provence. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
- ^ "Our ten favourite digifeminist artists. Dazed". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
- ^ "Wednesday Web Artist of the Week: Emilie Gervais. Artslant". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
- ^ Heather Warren-Crow (2014) Girlhood and the Plastic Image Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press p. 164-165
- ^ "Emilie Gervais & Sarah Weis Triangulation". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
- ^ "Sarah Weis and Emilie Gervais: ♡ ♥ Blinking Girls Cave ♥ ♡ Glasstire". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
- ^ a b "Emilie Gervais fyca". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
- ^ "Artist's notebook: Emilie Gervais Animal". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
- ^ "From Porn to Pizza, Some Postinternet Art Is Deeper Than It Looks Hyperallergic". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
- ^ "Interview with artist Emilie Gervais New Art West Midlands". Retrieved 27 October 2017.
- ^ "Art Object Culture". Rhizome.
- ^ "Rhizome – Art Object Culture". classic.rhizome.org.
- ^ "An interview with Lucy Chinen Aqnb". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
- ^ "New Iconographies: The Museum Of Internet Sleek". Retrieved 25 October 2017.
- ^ Gervais, Emilie. "A Letter to Young Internet Artists". Animal New York. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
- ^ "Offline Art". transmediale. Retrieved 18 June 2018.