ISABEL HAYEUR'S DISORIENTATION

BY CHRISTOPHER BLANCHETTE AND JOSHUA CAMERON

ISABELLE HAYEUR is a Quebec-based fine artist whose work critically examines environmental issues around urban development and social conditions. She is particularly interested in exploring, documenting, and echoing the feelings of alienation and disenchantment that result from environmental changes. As an image-based artist, she is internationally known for her photographs and experimental videos. Since the late 1990s, Isabelle has documented altered landscapes, industrial areas, tourist sites, abandoned places, urban fringes, and underprivileged regions. An integral concern of hers is the evolution of land and communities.

Isabelle’s work documents how humans take possession of territories and adapt them to our needs, the process and results of which are not always for the better.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO DOCUMENT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUMANS AND NATURE?

I think this relationship is fundamental. Earth is our only home and the conflict between the natural and the man-made has completely transformed the world. Massive urbanization and industrialization has resulted in impoverished biodiversity and poses a risk to human health. Ecological disasters like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the garbage slates forming on the oceans are becoming more common.

HOW HAVE YOU SEEN THIS RELATIONSHIP IMPROVE OR DECLINE OVER THE COURSE OF YOUR ART PRACTICE?

I have seen awareness improve a lot, but sadly, further environmental decline has accompanied the understanding. People now pay more attention to environmental issues and the fact that we are facing an ecological crisis. In my early twenties, I worked for Greenpeace, and very few people were aware of environmental problems at that time. Climate change was not a well-acknowledged issue. I think people are now more concerned.

Still, I have met climate change deniers and people who think everything will be all right. Last year I was working in New Orleans and I spoke with some people who believed we should never sacrifice jobs or the economy for environmental concerns. As long as people think that the economy is more important than everything else, we will face enivonmental problems.

HAVE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES AFFECTED YOU PERSONALLY?

My childhood in the Montreal suburb of Bois-des-Filion had a lasting impact on my art. As in many peripheral towns in Quebec, its landscape is constantly transforming. For over 20 years, I have lived by the shores of a river, and it has become very polluted. I have observed this stream transform over time. Its ecosystem has changed and some of the animals that used to live in it have disappeared.

During a stay in southern Florida in 2008, I took some pictures with a small submersible camera. Leaving crystal-clear waters to vacationers, I preferred to capture the dirty waters of navigation canals. Since then, I have acquired a watertight tank that allows me to photograph underwater environments of all kinds, helping me to develop my ongoing series Underworlds. For these images, I dive into troubled waters of dubious, uncertain origin. Underwater worlds are fascinating and spellbinding. Instead of depicting classically seductive images of tropical seas, I want to show something altogether different. My work plays on the sense of wonder that is usually associated with underwater shooting. The aquatic landscapes I photograph have been considerably altered by human development. I have documented dying ecosystems near New Jersey’s Chemical Coast and the marine cemetery of Rossville (Staten Island), Lake Ontario, the Grand River (Ontario), Lake Champlain, and many other bodies of water in Canada.

TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR MOST RECENT PROJECT.

I am working on a project titled Dépayser (Territoires et citoyens sous haute tension), or Strange Land (Territories and Citizens under High Tension). It critically examines how hydroelectric power has transformed Quebec’s landscape. Using photographs taken all over the province, this work testifies to the struggles of citizens confronted with the development of that industry. It pays attention to how citizens have rallied to defend their regions and to demand better protection for their environments. It is a political project that looks at the ways we occupy and manage the land.

“Dépayser” means literally to take someone out of a country and make her/him inhabit another one; it also means to cause disorientation so that a person does not know where she/he is anymore. The people whose lands have been invaded by electric towers or submerged to create reservoirs for dams are living this. It is a bizarre feeling: that of being at home but in an environment that has become estranged. Losses of familiar landmarks have become constant in these days of accelerated development.

Hydroelectric power has extensively moulded (and disfigured) the landscape of Quebec. That industry was nationalized at the beginning of the 1960s for the common good, but today Hydro- Québec manages its resources more like a private corporation. Currently, several citizens groups are meeting to courageously denounce that situation. These people — farmers, livestock producers, vacationers, leftist politicians, public personalities, and so on — come from different backgrounds. One goal unites them and it is to stop new high voltage transmission lines on their land and in their localities. These expansion projects are often unnecessary or geared toward the exportation of electricity and do not benefit the community. In a political climate that sees public institutions dismantled, the task of defending land befalls to groups of citizens abandoned by a government obsessed with economic development. I photograph landscapes across Quebec that include high voltage lines. These landscapes often go unnoticed, perhaps because they have occupied our territory for such a long time, but when one knows how to capture it, their incongruity is astonishing. I’m also photographing the people at home and in the affected areas of their communities.

Isabelle Hayeur’s art is both political and poetic, a documentation, and a creative statement. Her images are not always beautiful in a traditional way, but always intrigue and provoke questions from the viewer. In these moments of curiosity and quiet reflection, Isabelle’s message about mindfully considering human activity’s influence on land and water is clear.

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