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Year Created

2021

Year Acquired

2023

Keywords

Acadians

Cultures

Canadian

Medium

Paper

Art Forms

Work on paper

Land of Evangeline Trail, 1930

by: Rémi Belliveau


Henri Hébert's Evangeline statue, erected in 1920, is best known as a powerful symbol of the Acadian Deportation, but it is also a relic of a bygone era in Nova Scotia's tourism industry. In the half-century leading up to the Second World War, Longfellow's fictional Acadian heroine was recuperated on a large scale by various bodies, who turned her into a veritable mascot. At the height of this phenomenon, one could leave Boston aboard the steamship S. S. Evangeline, disembark at Yarmouth, board a Dominion Atlantic Railway train decorated with Evangeline logos, and set off on the Land of Evangeline Route towards the Evangeline statue in Grand-Pré; all while sipping an Evangeline Pale Dry Ginger Ale and nibbling Evangeline Cookies. This silkscreen [simply to be framed] seeks to highlight the absurd nature of the fetishization of this peasant Acadian character by a ruling class of non-Acadian English-speaking aristocrats by modifying the composition of a stamp published by Royal Canada Post in 1930. Here, the name CANADA is replaced as the official banner by a territorial fiction called EVANGELINIA, where the Evangeline cult is transformed into a Disneyland-like capitalist dystopia. Represented in this way, Grand-Pré National Historic Site - with the statue of Evangeline in the foreground - takes on the function of a seat of power in the new jurisdiction of "Evangelineia", where Saint-Charles-des-Mines Memorial Church serves as a public service building - its spire decorated with the letter E pennon.

Small belliveaur creditphoto anniefranceleclerc Rémi Belliveau

Rémi Belliveau is an Acadian trans non-binary interdisciplinary artist and musician hailing from Memramcook, New Brunswick, a village located in Mi’kma’ki, the traditional unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people.

Their work attempts to deconstruct and reprogram the foundational, structural, and imaginary principles of the Acadian culture to which they belong in the hopes of cultivating capacities for (self)analysis and critical thinking.

Since 2012, their work has been exhibited in events and group shows including Instrumental Stories (curator: Véronique LeBlanc, 2019) at the University of Moncton’s Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen, Art in the Open 2017 (Charlottetown, PEI) and Writing Topography (curator: Corrina Ghaznavi, 2015) at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (NB).

 In 2020, la Galerie de l’UQAM (Montreal) presented their MFA graduate show Yesterday Seems So Far Away. The year prior, their first solo show, Dissonances rurales, was presented at the Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen under de direction of Nisk Imbeault.

As an arts professional, Rémi has also co-directed Moncton’s Galerie Sans Nom with Annie France Noël (2014 to 2018), has assumed the role of (co)curator in two retrospectives (2015, 2018), has taught as a sessional at the Université de Moncton (2017), and has published in Canadian Art magazine.

In 2021, they were nominated Atlantic finalist for the Sobey Art Award and showed their work at the National Gallery of Canada (curator: Josée Drouin-Brisebois).


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