Bombshell - Shannon Bool

Publication date: March 30, 2019

About the artist

Shannon Bool is dedicated to a multidisciplinary artistic practice that brings together tapestry, carpet, photogram, sculpture, installation and painting. Since 2002, she has combined techniques specific to fine art with processes and materials more commonly associated with craft. This practice offers a feminist perspective that differs from the conventional reading that modern art is often subject to. Each of her projects is rooted in a research approach on the history of art or architecture; the objects, diagrams and images that compose her works restore forgotten stories that carry social prejudices that have become contemporary issues. Her imagery, the result of diligent and extremely refined research, produces a subtle effect that is unsettling but nevertheless fertile. Drawing inspiration from both elite and popular culture, Bool multiplies layers of meaning. Who is looking at what (or whom)? What scope should we give to this gaze? These are questions that could not be more relevant in a society where we seem to prefer subjective points of view to objective facts.

About the authors

The texts were written by Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre (Joliette), Esther Kinsky (Berlin) and Tammer El-Sheikh (Toronto).

Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre reviews a body of work by Bool that celebrates and critiques Le Corbusier. Shannon Bool returns in her work to a project that the architect intended for the city of Algiers, but which never saw the light of day; she reveals hidden aspects of the man while offering new insight into the role of the gaze in his practice.

Esther Kinsky, for her part, offers a detailed analysis of three works by Bool, which draws on the image of the territory – as a space of memory and association – within the framework of a reflection on the intriguing process of cultural crossbreeding.

Finally, Tammer El-Sheikh argues that the historical arc drawn by Bool's work, which traces the libidinal and colonial investments of modernism, echoes the complex critique formulated by Edward W. Said in his work Orientalism: The Orient Created by the West.

About the catalog

Several institutions in North America and Europe – including the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Canada), the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris (France), the Kunstverein Braunschweig (Germany) and the Musée d’art de Joliette (Canada) – collaborated on the preparation of this book and the related exhibitions. We would like to express our gratitude to Shannon Bool for her work, her vision and her commitment. The entire undertaking required a sustained commitment on her part over many months. She considered this book and each venue as a new stage in a constantly evolving project, thus contributing to making it a unique and stimulating experience for all parties involved.

At the same time, each venue will have shed its own light on Bool's work. The first exhibition held as part of the project in Canada was curated by Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre at the Musée d'art de Joliette, then presented at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, in the form of a co-curatorship by St-Jean Aubre and Sunny Kerr. The exhibitions that toured in France and Germany were organized by St-Jean Aubre and Catherine Bédard (Paris), then by Jule Hillgärtner (Braunschweig).

We would like to thank the technical and administrative staff of each institution for their contributions. Our thanks also go to Daniel Faria of Galerie Daniel Faria (Toronto), as well as to Iris Kadel and Moritz Willborn of Galerie Kadel Willborn (Düsseldorf). The production of this book and the exhibitions would not have been possible without their support.

176 pages

22 x 31 cm, German binding

Texts in German, French and English

Legal deposit: 2019