About the Exhibition

Proliferations of the Senses  – exhibition essay by Melinda Topilko

“A line, a tone, is not really important because it records what you have seen, but because of what it will lead you on to see”  – John Berger, On Drawing.

Using ‘writing and drawing in space’ Pascaline Knight has created A Knight move ou Petites Histoires Racontees Par Moi; an installation composed of a variety of pieces that utilize not only traditional printmaking techniques, but also collage, embroidery, sculptural elements and text. The title of the work references the game of chess, one of strategy and anticipation of another’s motives; the transformative action of butterfly from larval (or child) stage to adulthood; and the deeply personal subject matter of the underlying theme of the exhibition – death by suicide.

Referencing the daily and mundane details of life – often through a child-like lens – allows an access point to the work, and a glimpse into the invisible behind the visible that inspires Knight’s practice. This fragile reality, both intimate and shared, is communicated through a non linear narrative about death and grief created by the images, position of the objects and the use of text within the installation.

The centrepiece of the installation is the book A Knight Move ou I’Émergence de la Chrysalide. The silkscreened work is a combination of images and texts – in both French and English – taken from Knight’s personal journals, themselves a daily exploration of ideas through drawing and writing, and are presented alongside.

The wall works are a collection of smaller pieces that can be read individually and as a whole. Installed in a tight group, some with threads leading between and over each other, these pieces demonstrate Knight’s sensitivity for line and attention to detail. The images used and created are at once familiar and foreign, resulting in both clarity and ambiguity of meaning that allows the ‘mind to fill in the gaps, and make up its own storyline.’ 

Extending the dialogue, Knight has created cement sculptures engraved with the letters R – E – G – R – E – T, surrounded by small envelopes. Inviting viewers to write down a regret about a person lost, and then place it within one of the envelopes to leave behind, speaks to the universality and terrible uniqueness found in grief.

Acknowledging the impossibility of knowing an individual’s inner emotions and thoughts, Knight not only allows for, but cultivates and anticipates, the viewer’s unique and personal interpretation of the objects present both singularly and as a whole. Within the framework of Death, Knight creates a space both physical and conceptual that plays with the tension created by our denial of the inevitable. In this way, she is also speaking to the universality and unifying possibilities of the processes of grief and loss, and how ‘our senses are perforations that allow experiences to leak between us’.

The artist would like to thank the Canada Arts Council and the Quebec Arts Council as well as IPOLC for their support in the realisation of this installation.

About the Artist

Born in 1969, Pascaline Knight lives and works in Montreal. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University. She was selected by David Uss for an exhibition in Galerie VAV at Concordia in 1996. She studied and practiced abroad at the University of Philadelphia in Rome, Italy, a four month study in India, a residency at the Printers Guild of Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland and at the Lama Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. Upon return to Montreal in 2001, she developed silkscreen interventions with which she performed while directly printing phrases, questions (what makes the irreversiblet). These interventions take diverse forms, including the exhibition Aux Bons Plaisirs Fugace/ Sans Nom at Dare-Dare in Montreal. 

Knight received grants from CALQ and CAC to write and publish the book A Knight Move. In 2011 she collaborated with Guillaume Brisson-Darveau with whom she has completed several residencies across Canada. Together they continue to explore the possibilities of silkscreening, sculpture and performance, which ore brought together through installations.

She is currently pursuing an artistic practice that comprises of performance, drawing, writing and collage.