Lemieux Explores the Significance of Objects

The floor is littered: torn-up cardboard advertising earmuffs, the vandalized arm of a wooden chair, hats and helmets of all varieties, and a bird-embellished hanging lamp highlight an unmatched curio collection.

These items occupy the Sert Gallery in the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts as one part of Annette Lemieux’s “Unfinished Business” exhibit, a companion to her traveling retrospective “The Strange Life of Objects: The Art of Annette Lemieux.” Her piece, “Things to walk away with,” is upstairs in the Sert Gallery, and the six other pieces in “Unfinished Business” are installed in the Carpenter Center’s main gallery. The exhibit will be on display in until April 1.

The impetus for the collection was a pair of unfortunate events in Lemieux’s life: A tree fell into her backyard and she was evicted from her studio of 20 years. The result was an excavation of her past works and the emotions accompanying their inspiration.

Where one might simply see an auction list for a late 20th-century edition of popular item-collecting television shows “Pawn Stars” or “Hoarders,” Lemieux explored the meaning behind what D.N. Rodowick, interim director at the Carpenter Center, called “the poetry of objects.” She sees the universality of history and memory that could be invoked through personal connotations, and this theme is especially poignant in “Things to walk away with.”

“The objects have a relationship to my past works or experiences and also their own histories or stories, some even unknown to me. They are alive for me. They are not nature morte­—they are not inanimate,” Lemieux said. She highlights the importance of these histories by arranging the objects in a certain way.

In the case of “Things to walk away with,” Lemieux is careful to arrange the objects in a certain way. “The objects were arranged according to height, so [as] not to get caught up in formal concerns, or to create unique juxtapositions,” Lemieux said. “Due to the objects’ placement by height, there were interesting juxtapositions that I didn’t invent.” This exemplifies the way in which Lemieux acts as a conceptual artist who works from an idea to create a finished product. It is her approach to her work and the space she creates for a knowledgable audience that communicates meaning to the viewer.

“La Itala Laborposteno” meaning “The Italian Job” in Esperanto is comprised of seven prints, four in black and white and three in primary colors with post-apocalyptic words in Esperanto formatted using WordArt. The pieces are tagged with words like “Monstruo” and “Flugsoldato” (meaning “monster” and “paratrooper,” respectively) to evoke her idea that humanity is destined for self-inflicted doom. The use of mirroring in some prints helps to enforce this idea of fighting against ourselves. The narrative on which it is based does not deal directly with the way we interpret the world via symbols, which differentiates this from the other works in the exhibit. While it might seem out of place, this work shows off Lemieux’s versatility in expressing different themes.

Curator Lelia Amalfitano claims that the exhibit’s primary function is to introduce viewers to Lemieux’s creative process, from the identification of specific objects to their integration into a statement reflecting human memory and culture-shaping. This approach is more tailored to already-established fans of Lemieux’s work because it seems to lack a coherent unifying thread to connect the disparate approaches and symbols she employs, which new viewers might need in order to fully appreciate what is otherwise a novel approach to making art.

Lemieux is somewhat limited by the sheer overwhelming nature of the themes she is tackling, themes that cannot ostensibly be understood in such few pieces. Knowledgeable viewers will appreciate the diverse lenses she supplies to analyze our material culture. She also creates a holistic message that is enforced through its composite parts. “Unfinished Business” was created using a very introspective approach, which exemplifies Lemieux’s ability to invite the audience to share in what is for her a very personal experience.