Dana Michel and Yoan Sorin at CAC Brétigny

Artists: Dana Michel, Yoan Sorin

Exhibition title: Slash Universe

Curated by: Marie Bechetoille

Venue: CAC Brétigny, Brétigny-sur-Orge, France

Date: October 13 – December 15, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and CAC Brétigny

Dana Michel and Yoan Sorin met about a dozen years ago in Montreal. It was the beginning of a deep connection based on art and friendship. Both have taken indirect paths to get to where they are today, practicing sports at an advanced level, for instance, while bonding over numerous references. In performance they have found a way of feeling, sparking, and sharing emotions by bringing in their own lived experiences. In her shows, the choreo-grapher Dana Michel is able to summon on stage multiple identities that embody the relationship between fragility and violence, vulnerability and self-mockery, the grotesque and the sublime. Depending on the context, Yoan Sorin mixes and appropriates for his own ends artistic and cultural codes through drawing, installation, painting, and performance. His role as an art advisor for Dana Michel is a way for both of them to keep in touch and continue their discussion. Their family backgrounds link both to the Caribbean, they create a cartography that is eclectic, polysemic, and indistinct, one that resists being defined or pinned down. The presence of autobiographic elements is a chance to elude projections and deploy possibilities. The body sets in motion personal stories and daily gestures to speak about the margins, the issues that power raises, and connections with others. By their reversal of established hierarchies, the odd and the intimate are united.

At CAC Brétigny, Dana Michel and Yoan Sorin have been invited for the first time to work together with and on the things they have been thinking about and hungering after, their reflections and their dreams, in the form of a joint exhibition, offering assemblages, visits, and breaks from reality. Thanks to the designer Romain Guillet, the art center’s space has been reimagined as a place for experimentation, something that is modular and evolving. At the start, midway through, and at the end of this project, performances will reactivate the installation. The works are at one and the same time sculptures, paintings, props, set-tings, pedestals, and bases. They seem to be hiding behind masks and are rediscovered, looming up transformed. These shifts and evolutions allow each visitor to imagine a sub-jective intuitive narrative. “Slash Universe” is an environment in which nothing is fixed so that improvisation can thrive. The show speaks of a friendship, an open correspondence between two artists who enjoy producing work together. Gradually a place forms and comes into focus, where one is constantly changing direction, boredom is never a bad experience, and failure is a rebound, where one parries and reappropriates expectation, and everything remains to be invented.

-Marie Bechetoille

Dana Michel is a Montreal-based choreographer and performer. She earned a BFA in contemporary dance from Concordia University and in 2011 was the recipient of a “danceWeb” grant (Vienna). She was a resident of Usine C (Montreal) and the National Center for Dance in Ottawa. In 2014, Dana Michel was awarded the ImPulstanz Prize (Vienna). Her solo piece Mercurial George was performed at the Festival TransAmériques (Montreal) in 2016. In 2017, she was awarded the Silver Lion for innovative dance at the Venice Biennale. In 2018, she became the first artist in residence for dance at the National Arts Centre of Ottawa. Dana Michel is an associate artist with Par B.L.eux, a contemporary dance company founded and directed by Benoît Lachambre.

Yoan Sorin lives and works in Douarnenez, France. He is a graduate of the School of Fine Arts in Nantes and the universities of Montreal and Cuenca. His drawings, paintings, videos, and performances break down the distinctions between popular culture and art. His work has been featured at La Friche Belle de Mai (Marseille, 2015), Frac des Pays de la Loire (Nantes, 2016), A-Frame (La Courneuve, 2017), MNAC (Bucharest, 2016), Nada lokal (Vienna, 2018), Hunter East Harlem Gallery (New York, 2018) and 40mcube (Rennes, 2019). He joined the company Nada Productions as a dancer and designer in 2017, and collaborates with 14N61W Gallery in Fort-de-France (Haiti) since 2018.

Marie Bechetoille is a curator and art critic. She was interim director of the Contemporary Art Center la synagogue de Delme (2016-2017), project coordinator at Bétonsalon—art and research center in Paris (2012-2014), and exhibition assistant at the Swiss Institute in New York (2010), the Palais de Tokyo (2009), and MAMVP (2007). In her projects she has notably experimented with the relationships between curatorial and publishing formats in working with artists, curators, graphic designers and designers. She has put together shows at Bucharest’s National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Quartier in Quimper, 6b in Saint-Denis, and In extenso in Clermont-Ferrand. In 2013, she cofounded the association Fanfiction 93, which publishes works in Seine-Saint-Denis according to a collective collaborative approach. She is a member of C-E-A (a French association of exhibition curators), AICA (the International Association of Art Critics), and the editorial board of La belle revue.

Romain Guillet is a Paris-based designer developing his work in a range of contexts, including set design, furniture, the living arts, and CGI. Between 2008 and 2010, he was part of the team put together by Mathieu Lehanneur, and during the same period cofounded Statue, a studio specialized in the design of objects, and later the residency and publishing house Dixjours in 2016. In 2018, in Paris, he opened a project space called Confort Mental that is dedicated to collaborative production modes and ways of working. At the same time he has designed furniture and interiors for the Pompidou Center in Paris and Malaga, the Beaux Arts of Paris, the Palais de Tokyo, and Toulouse’s Printemps de septembre, and regularly collaborates with Lafayette Anticipations.

CAC Brétigny is a facility of Cœur d’Essonne Agglomération and enjoys the support of the Ministry of Culture—Drac Île-de-France, the Île-de-France Region, and the Departmental Council of the Essonne, with additional support by the Ville de Brétigny-sur-Orge. It is a member of the TRAM and d.c.a networks. Yoan Sorin benefited the support of the Cité Internationale des Arts.

Exhibition view «Slash Universe», Dana Michel and Yoan Sorin. Scenography: Romain Guillet. A proposal by Marie Bechetoille. CAC Brétigny, 2019. Photo: Aurélien Mole

Dana Michel and Yoan Sorin, «Slash Universe I», Sunday, October 13^th, 2019. Performance within the context of the exhibition «Slash Universe». Scenography: Romain Guillet. A proposal by Marie Bechetoille. CAC Brétigny, 2019. Photo: Fanny Trichet