ANNE FAUTEUX & ANA TEIXEIRA
THANK YOU, COME AGAIN! / OBRIGADO VOLTE SEMPRE! / MERCI,REVENEZ BIENTÔ!

Exhibition

MERCER UNION, 2008 
Co-Curator: Emelie Chhangur

Thank you, come again! / Obrigado, volte sempre! / Merci, revenez bientôt!  brings together Brazilian artist Ana Teixeira and Canadian artist Anne Fauteux in a two-month residency and exhibition treading on the borders between art making and everyday life. Setting up a space for dialogue and exchange, the premise allows the interaction of the two artists, before and during the residency, to determine the direction of the work. 

In her “street action series,” Ana Teixeira orchestrates conditions under which she can interact with the public, one-by-one. She generates alternative circumstances for personal exchange, sometimes through trading one thing for another, other times through an experiential process that initiates new possibilities for a meaningful encounter with others. Anne Fauteux’s practice aims to infuse ordinary interactions with artistic gestures and to bring a dimension of lived life to art experiences. Her Bureau des objets lyriques migrateurs (Bureau of Migrating Lyrical Objects), a parody of bureaucratic structures that she established in 1999, provides a framework for “socio-poetic experiments,” creating situations for public engagement and exchange.

Contextualizing the artists’ practices, the exhibition presented two of their older works alongside new performance-based projects that evolved throughout the duration of the show. In Listening to Love Stories, which she has performed in six different international cities, Teixeira creates an intimate encounter with the passer-by, offering her ears to their confessions. Beside the past versions of the project, Teixeira will be creating a new one, by listening to love stories in the diverse neighbourhoods of Toronto. Fauteux’s Phagocyte Project is a wearable intestine-like stuffed object made from donated recycled materials, becoming a fragmentary portrait of a community. Contributors, who shared their stories along with their belongings, received in turn a wearable appendix of the Phagocyte inscribed with an altered proverb with a digestive twist, to be persistently repeated by its owner until infiltrating common jargon.

Continuing to poetically subvert the fabric of everyday, Fauteux’s new project, Licentious Anonymous, invites people who could benefit from more freedom, courage, and creativity to get a license that allows them to do something they wouldn’t otherwise dare, think, or make time to do. Lending each other the courage to have new experiences, participants carry out actions conceived by previous beneficiaries based on their frustrated desires.

Teixeira’s new project, I Lend You My Eyes, offers us new ways to perceive and understand the experiences of others: how we can get to know one another regardless of distance or difference. The artist lent her eyes to Torontonians who wanted to see, do, or experience something in São Paulo. In fulfilling their desires, she created individual works that act as documents or souvenirs of their surrogate experience of São Paulo. Participants were invited to meet her at Mercer Union to receive their specially created package. While in residence, Ana  similarly experienced Paulistans’ wishes. Ultimately, the two projects created a space for us to literally see and experience things differently through the eyes of others.

Artist Info

Ana Teixeira is an artist who graduated from the University of São Paulo School of Communications and Arts (ECA-USP) and has a master’s degree in Visual Arts from the same school. Her work transits through different media, with a particular interest in drawing and participatory art. Literature and cinema are her main references. Her experience includes exhibitions and residency programs both in Brazil and abroad. She has published the books: Para que algo aconteça – For Something to Happen (2018), a compilation of twenty years of her work, with critical texts by curators and art historians; Minhas duas avós (childish-2017); and Cala a boca já morreu! Leitura e coleta de Textos. Silenciamento feminino no acervo da Biblioteca Mário de Andrade (2021). Lives and works between Cologne, Germany, and São Paulo, Brazil.

Anne Fauteux is a visual artist, jeweller, designer and singer based both in Montreal and Toronto. After completing a BFA at Concordia University in Montreal (1983) she spent one year in Italy to do a jewellery apprenticeship, then moved to London UK to set her studio on the River Thames. This was the beginning of her endless wandering in quest for Vitamin NEW, learning a variety of trades for her art projects, including vocal skills. Fauteux has been teaching jewellery at the Saidye Bronfman Center in Montreal where she was also head of the jewellery department. She later tought at Nunavut Arctic College in Ikaluktutiak, and OCAD in Toronto. She has worked for the Canadian Art Foundation as a “School Hop” facilitator in Toronto. Her multi-disciplinary art project BOLM (http://bolm.ca) brings together her skills in sculpture, set design, costume design , furniture and graphic design, textiles, jewellery, photography  and sound. Since 1984, her work has been shown in North America and Europe in over 20 solo exhibitions, 70 group shows and concerts.