Isabelle Hayeur
"LE CAMP DE LA RIVIÈRE"

Exhibition: 31 August – 28 September, 2018
Opening reception: Friday, 31 August, 5.30pm In the presence of the artist.

Over the past twenty years, Isabelle Hayeur has been probing the territories she has travelled in order to understand how our contemporary civilizations occupy and shape their environment. She is concerned about the future of places and communities in the neoliberal sociopolitical context in which we are currently living. Her current researches focus on water and resistance. She examines our relationship with bodies of water, underscoring their vital importance. She also document citizens’ resistance, in particular activists who are fighting to protect landscapes and the environment.

Her latest project focuses on the Camp de la Rivière (Camp by the River), a camp occupied by citizens which is located on a logging road leading to the Junex oil exploration site in the Gaspé area (Québec, Canada). This independent movement for re-appropriating the territory began in 2017 to demand a halt to drilling. The camp remains in place in order to inform the population of the risks of oil and gas exploration and development. In both Canada and the United States, legislation is supportive of extractivism and the industry is heavily subsidized by public funding, which leads some citizens to organize in order to condemn the situation and to put forward alternative views. These activists are water conservationists and whistleblowers who are fighting for a cleaner, healthier environment and a fairer society; they are filling the gap left by governments that have let us down. Taken in 2017 and 2018, this body of photographs is an acknowledgement of these citizens’ commitment, solidarity and selflessness.