By Mike Landry
Anne-Marie Oullet's "Hyperprotection" suit in use.
Although ET has many memorable scenes, one in particular always stood out for me. It’s the when scientists in Hazmat suits approach and quarantine the house.
Shot from the child-height low angle point of view Spielberg uses for the entire film, the scientists look more like aliens than E.T. and are much more terrifying. And it’s this feeling of fear I had as a small boy that I flashed back to when I saw Anne-Marie Ouellet’s latest work, Hyperprotection.
The project continues the Montreal-based textile/installation artist’s concern with individualism in our urban environment, and the line between public and private space. The protective suit Ouellet has fashioned is a visual metaphor for the boundary we create with society through private space.
Ouellet has been working with the notions of protection, individualism and community for the past five years. Her 2004 work Tente-à-tête featured a tent-like object that was used to cover one’s head. And what can be seen as early prototypes for Hyperprotection can be found in her Unicité installations, which featured protective outfits for various cities.
But, like its name suggests, Hyperprotection is the most extreme approach Ouellet has taken so far.
“With this project, I touched on the political aspect more and I amplified the need of protection,” explains Ouellet. “It’s the first time that I’m working with paranoia. In my last projects, I had touched on protection but not linked with physical danger.”
The extremity of the suit instantly speaks to the depth of fear we feel lurking about in our urban communities. Yet, the suit also speaks to Ouellet’s politics. A split between homemade and manufactured, Ouellet wanted the suit to be like old home-built cold war bunkers. The result is a confusion between many types of suits, conveying the lack of protection the suit would actually provide in an emergency.
Rather than housing one’s self off from society, Ouellet believes group activity is the answer to strong communities.
“The vulnerability in urban society may give behaviours to people, where notion of the other is left aside to advantage one’s self. It’s by suggesting objects, which are directed to individuality within the community that my work invests in the resistance notion.”
For Hyperprotection, Ouellet will transform the gallery, like the scientist’s do in ET. Visitors will be channeled through a corridor into a bigger space draped in suspended orange tarps where they will see a mannequin wearing the suit.
“This installation will be between shelter and cloison. It is another layer of protection.
“I think that is impossible to protect yourself, and I think that we have to live day by day.”
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