MERCILLE, Louise

Fascinated by the intimate quality exuded by the natures mortes of Dutch painters from the seventeenth century, Louise Mercille has been producing performance art and installations (some of which are edible) since the late seventies. As illustrated in De mémoire (“on memory”; 1986), these unfold in isolation amid delicate artifacts symbolic of personal tragedy: the artist wanders through assemblages of fragile objects, handling them as though performing some esoteric ritual for exorcising curses. Her works generally favour insinuation over demonstration, encouraging viewers to reconstruct what has been left unsaid. While Mercille was not physically among the “vanities” making up the installation Les tables de la loi (“the tablets of law”; 1997-1998), forty-eight photographs of her silhouette evoked her presence, each enclosed in at once protective and suffocating turrets.