Les Soeurs Couture

L'aspirante souffleuse

Artistic collaborators and actual siblings, les Soeurs Couture, Nancy & Sheila, have for the last five years engaged in a conversation concerning the idea of folklore. The two persevere in their evolution, mining their family history, and in the process they create and nourish an artistic cosmos made up of salvaged objects from the garage and studio of their grandfather. Their educational development (science degrees) has given them a taste for intuitive experience. Imaginary machines, both playful and colorful, come to life, as in la Pelle Berçante (2001, Québec) and Vitriol (1998, Québec). Les Soeurs Couture disguise these machines, concealing them in women’s clothing and playing as well on the stereotypical meanings of these objects. "It’s with a passion for creation and a desire to relate the fascinating processes of inner life that we progress in our work /tures or artistic arrangements present a playful subversion through the different slants afforded by hybridisation. L'Aspirante souffleuse, exhibited in 2002 at Lieu in Québec under the title of Système d'Inventilation, is composed of a vacuum cleaner and a snowblower. This hybrid composition inverts the codes of usage since the function of one machine is transposed to the other and vice versa. Come and discover this astonishing assemblage where the snowblower sucks in and the vacuum cleaner blows out.

Les Sœurs Couture are originally from the Quebec area and have shown their work at la Manif d’Art of Québec, at l’Îlot Fleuri, at le Lieu (Québec) and recently during the last edition of Espace Emergent in Montréal.

View of the exhibit
Credit: Guy L'Heureux