Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens: Putting Life to Work

About this exhibition

Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens’ art practice investigates the ways in which the economic sciences and the theories of management represent the world. It focuses on the influence of productivist logic on all spheres of human activity.

The exhibition looks at the internalization of productivity by individuals in works realized since 2009, including the new installation Each Number Equals One Inhalation and One Exhalation. The installations, sculptures, videos, and performative projects selected by the curator Véronique Leblanc examine the ways in which the injunction to perform affects the body—actions, thought, attitudes, language—from the point of view of work and life, two spheres that tend to be conflated within a model that many researchers refer to as “cognitive capitalism.” The works underline the physiological, subjective and cognitive dimensions of the body and is a central element in the artists’ critical stance against neoliberalism’s ideology. It is defined both as the site where the mechanisms of productivity are realized and as an agent of their disabling.

This exhibition is presented jointly at the Owens Art Gallery at Mount Allison University from 20 January to 12 March, 2017 and at the Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen at l’Université de Moncton from 27 January to 26 March 2017.

Curated by Véronique Leblanc and organized by the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University.

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