Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain is proud to present a new version of the installation Black Holes. The images of individual latrine pits set in endless alignments at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp embody the vision of a dark energy still vested in these slowly disintegrating and seemingly banal openings . Like cosmic dark holes condensing a formidable force, the latrines manifest as an expression of absolute evil: the reduction of millions to humiliation without redemption, a loss of reference, a dead end.
Black Holes is the most recent body of work undertaken by Marie-Jeanne Musiol over the course of ongoing walks in Auschwitz where she has photographed the approaches to the camp and the trees rooted in human ashes. The artist now interprets these openings in a broader cosmological dimension that is also a focus of her energy photography.
Black Holes was first presented in a curated solo exhibition by Scott McLeod at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art (Toronto) in 2011. A major essay by Celina Jeffery entitled Contemplating the Void: Marie-Jeanne Musiol's Black Holes was published in Prefix Photo 23.
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Marie-Jeanne Musiol is pursuing both a photographic reflection in Auschwitz and the recording of luminous imprints of plants. The artist exhibits her installations in Canadian and European galleries and museums (ZKM, La Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Ludwig Museum) and in multimedia events (Spektropja/Riga and Photon + International Techno Art Exhibition/ New Taipei). Her work is represented in public collections (Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Art Bank, Ottawa Art Gallery, City of Ottawa, McGill University, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Houston Museum of Fine Arts) and several corporate and private collections.
