The Interdisciplinary Art Portfolio of Marie-Hélène Tessier
Froment fromenté, cabaret inside an exhibition by Aurélien Fromen
Marie-Hélène Tessier (aka Marianne Tisserand) is a Vancouver-based multimedia artist who uses elements of writing, performance, and collaboration in her works. The artist’s practice is prolific, deeply philosophical and occasionally esoteric, with Marie incorporating elements of a range of disciplines to examine relationships, social mores, and language.
I really like the way Marie incorporates writing into a practice that seems very rooted in visual and performance art. Naturally, there is an element of writing in many performance pieces, but Marie seems to take this a step further in some cases, showcasing blurbs, paragraphs, and pastiches on her portfolio site that are as intricately layered as they are difficult to categorize. Works like 遊客 Vancouver-Kaifeng-non-stop are microcosmic, stream-of-consciousness writings that seem to sit squarely between poetry and prose.
There’s a sense of interconnectedness that runs through all of Marie’s artworks -- both in the sense that Marie’s works seem to exist as connected dots in one overarching concept, and in the sense that the collaborative nature of these pieces connects Marie with other artists, and by extension, her audiences.
