Raphaëlle de Groot turns 'emotional burdens' into art
Award-winning Montreal visual artist’s project has been in the making since 2009
Artist Raphaëlle de Groot is a collector — of other people’s burdens.
The award winning Montreal-based visual artist’s project has been in the making since 2009. She travelled to cities and towns in Canada, the United States, Mexico and Italy and put up notices on utility poles and public bulletin boards.
The notices invited people to donate objects that were full of personal meaning, things they couldn’t just throw out but which they no longer wanted.
"I asked people if they had objects that they would like to get rid of. Objects that you have at home that are kind of out of sight, that are not part of your present life anymore, that you have stored away, that are not necessarily valuable, but that for some reason you can't throw them out," she says.
"There's something that keeps you from throwing them out. So you're stuck with them and this has become a kind of burden in a way."
In return, de Groot — who won the $50,000 Sobey Art Award in 2012 — promised to take on each of those burdens as her own and to breathe new life into them by turning them into art.
"So you are going to be passing on this burden to me, liberating yourself from this weight, knowing that I would then be stuck with this problem," she says. "And my art work would be dealing with this problem."
- The Sunday Edition audio documentary: Your burden, de Groot's art
- Raphaëlle de Groot wins Sobey Art Award
The response was overwhelming.
People dug deep into the backs of their closets and the depths of their basements, and handed over pieces of their former selves.
And they also told de Groot the stories that went with them.
One man gave her a phone on which he heard of the deaths of his parents, for example. A woman gave her a red cord from the phone her father — who worked away from home — called her on every night when she was a girl. De Groot attached the red cord to the sad phone, and created what she calls a new narrative.
De Groot's collection has become a travelling exhibit, and she says the objects have taken on a life of their own.
"People really put a lot of thought into what they were giving me and also the personal significance of giving me that object. So it was a form of ritual for them, saying goodbye to this part of my life or this episode in my life. And maybe then something new can start for them."
She hopes her artworks will end up in a museum, but then laughs and says the objects are asking her to "butt out" of the decision and leave them alone to determine their own future.
Listen to the CBC Radio documentary from The Sunday Edition called “Objects of Burden” on March 1 at 9 a.m., or stream it here.
The Sunday Edition, March 2
On CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition for March 2:
Michael Enright: How fear of terrorism is being used as a political commodity. A look at the media frenzy over the discovery of a hole in the ground near York University in north Toronto.
Deconstructing the Debt Crisis: Tim Harford, aka The Undercover Economist, help make sense of the turmoil in global economics by explaining the pros and cons of debt and austerity, what political leaders get wrong in economic policy, and who actually holds our national debt.
Harper's Think Tank Army: In his book Harperism, Donald Gutstein argues that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has battalions of allies working with him to fundamentally change the character of Canada. His best soldiers? Right-leaning think tanks, the wealthy corporations that fund them, and the journalists and other opinion-leaders who propagate their ideas.