For her solo exhibition at VOX, Montreal, Bertille Bak presents a selection of her most recent video installations : Abus de souffle (2024), Nature morte. Partie 1: l’hiver (2023), Mineur mineur (2022), Bleus de travail (2020) as well as Boussa from the Netherlands (2017).
Tracking trajectories of outsourcing, Bak encounters Moroccan craftsmen confronted by the influx of made-in-China goods, women in Morocco employed to shell shrimp caught in the Netherlands, and children working in mines in five Southern countries. In each of these immersions in various communities, the artist and the groups directly affected map out a scenario and then stage it. The workers interpret fanciful versions of their daily actions for the camera, enhanced by rudimentary visual and sound effects added by the artist at the editing stage. In so doing, Bak and her collaborators provide absurdist illustrations of the impacts of international trade on local populations, while reinjecting doses of humanity into the logistics chain.
