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The Paris-born artist Jérôme Havre recently moved from Montreal to Toronto, with a significant two-person exhibition launched at the Textile Museum of Canada announcing his arrival. “Fictions and Legends: Heather Goodchild and Jérôme Havre” (running through April 13) forms a binary of approaches to storytelling, mythology, and biography, with Toronto artist Heather Goodchild illustrating Christian narratives through a text-ridden fabric installation and annexed maquettes, and Havre suspending his iconic knit figures within a charged environment that includes a hand-painted camouflage mural and infrared-optic  zoo cages.

During a recent talk with collector Kenneth Montague at the Textile Museum, Havre discussed his frustration with Murray Whyte‘s review of the exhibition. As the audience stirred, the conversation turned to the larger issue of Havre’s reception within various foreign environments. He voiced an optimism that the multicultural metropolis of Toronto might offer him new realities to respond to, and might reshape his elastic practice. BLOUIN ARTINFO Canada reached out to Havre for an extended conversation regarding his latest body of work, the issue of context and colonialism, and the review that left him wanting more. His responses have been translated through curator Andrea Picard.

What did the Textile Museum’s pairing with Heather Goodchild mean to you initially? And did your impression of this pairing change as the installation became manifest?

Sarah Quinton, the curator of “Fictions and Legends,” brought us together because we establish links through textiles and other means that are mythical and biographical narratives.

Before the installation I thought about how our works could be perceived by a specific public in a shared context. To emphasize a common environment, I gave into the idea of ​​adopting the color palette from Heather’s partitions, but ultimately decided against it as it would have entailed a new selection of photographs. I indicated that I would like there to be no contextual separation, even through the use of curtains.

Within a group exhibition I wanted to juxtapose our experiences and work in order to develop contemporary reflections on our practices, on our shared and distinct inquiries, without opposing them. And, in this sense, Sarah Quinton’s intent was respected in this exhibition.

What do you see your work sharing in common with hers, and where do you diverge?

Our work converges in the methods developed for inhabiting space, in a narrative sense. Also, in both of our cases, there is a creative and original work, technical and multidisciplinary, which precedes the installation process over a long period of time.

Our work maintains a critical response to the social and cultural environment we inhabit. Even if the forms differ, my ethos of living together is complementary to Heather’s. I personally have a resistance toward a partial tradition of exhibition-making. I work in favor of recognizing the sociocultural obstacles that diminish the dialogue. It is the angle I use. In any case, what is important for me is that this exhibition exists and that it became a platform for discussion that reduces the gaps, more than it widens them; and that it offered us, as artists and people, the opportunity to voice critical and diverse opinions, which is evidently lacking in our society.

It was interesting to see the involvement of photography in this show, and its use of an infrared-like palette working in contrast to the softer materiality of your textile works. What were you hoping to communicate through this juxtaposition of media and subject?

The four photographic prints are zoo cages to which I added a red filter, which initially gives them the visual effect of an anaglyph, yet there is no juxtaposition of different images. It is the same image whose red has been isolated, superimposed and offset on the original photograph; also, this red conditions us to perceive a relief on the original, not unlike the effect of the anaglyph, or how the close proximity of cyan and red shows a depth in the image.

The concept of these photos fulfills its function from the time in which the viewer becomes aware of the trompe l’oeil. The intent is to build new of points of reference from which one can appreciate the other components of the installation. These photographs are, in some ways, gauges for interpretation.

The murals of the photographed zoo cages are there to entertain the visitor, to distract from what one really sees and experiences. These cages form a link between the animal species and their natural environment, and numb our consciousness regarding the issue of life in captivity.

This scenic device allows us to perceive — though active movement — the space he occupies as if it were a cage, where he himself becomes a catalyst committed to redefining its appreciation. Analyzing the process leads me to the subject of my artistic work, which is organized around the fusion of cultures from a practical point of view, and of identity when a person not only has their own identity from the country in which they grew up, but an alternate heritage. How are these mixed identities taken into account by citizens and their policies within the expression of a national and cultural identity?

A recent review by Murray Whyte was the subject of some consternation during your talk with Kenneth Montague. Certainly the audience seemed to share your disappointment in the language used around your practice. What do you regard to be the failing of that review?

I was surprised that a “white” journalist, an art critic from a Christian culture, recognized his heritage as the standard of  critical appreciation and used this single identifying axis to markedly define a cultural bias inherent in the description of an exhibition showcasing two artists. I had to read the article twice before admitting that it was possible to openly express one’s subjectivity through excessive paternalism in Toronto’s Canadian press.

Within the fifteen paragraphs written about the exhibition, only two describe the works that I presented, and did so misleadingly and with an aim to divide: “Havre, a relatively recent arrival here, from Montreal via France, both complements and sparks off Goodchild’s work like flint.”

In addition to his bias, Whyte draws upon an image bank that belongs to a colonialist fantasy in order to illustrate his article. He develops an argument in which he fetishizes my works and an environment of  “beasts, electrified jungle.” He feverishly leads us with a syntax seeped in colonialist overtones in order to distill a condescending reading of my work and to oppose it to the notion of civilization by way of Heather Goodchild’s installation, “our Eurocentric Christian mythology.” He submits the works to common cultural focal points — ones which my installation aims to subvert so that the audience will suspect this intention.

But then in this era of globalization where the melding of cultures is evident, why would a daily newspaper call upon a Eurocentric gaze in a city where public opinion is multicultural and diverse? Does this mean that only white women and men from Christian ancestries reflect on contemporary art? The Toronto Star is an institution that should be objectively relaying information to and for all.

If Whyte’s gaze lacks the objectivity required to accurately inform the reader about works which use a non-Western angle, perhaps he should seek information from the artist and others in order to be able to develop criticism that is more fair. This would save us from discovering at the end of his article, expressed in a sustained, oppositional spirit pitting the works against each other, that “Where Goodchild engages your head and heart, Havre your gut.”

Have you been subjected to that kind of “reading” before (one in which a certain colonialist narrative or attitude gets expressed in relation to your work)?

No.

You’ve recently moved from France to Montreal, and now to Toronto. You mentioned in the talk that you’re adapting to a new hybridity and multiculturalism here. Considering the themes you’ve been touching on in your work until this point, and their imersion in both France and Montreal’s polarizing identity-based politics, how do you predict your work will react to your new setting? Can you foresee any major shifts in subject?

Toronto makes ​​me communicate issues that matter to me with more confidence, among other reasons, because this city develops in acknowledgment of its communities, unlike other cities where I’ve lived. What I see here is that the groups that make up Toronto, those that I meet and those in which I recognize myself, value their heritage. I believe that these cultural frictions, albeit fragile, smooth the surfaces and sensibly allow for a greater cohesion, all the while respecting their identities.

I always ask myself how the distribution of culture and power is orchestrated and built. Toronto — through its policies — instills in me a new perspective of “living together,” with its dysfunctions and its paradoxes, particularly glaring when talking about First Nations; however, this city absorbs its numerous strengths, moreso than it maintains a sole identity in comparison to European cities.

How does my artistic work respond to this phenomenon? It’s early to say. However, by taking stalk of the social fabric of this city and my place within in, I am pushed to be more collaborative, to make more immediate and critical work that is born of exchange and of my knowledge of cultural studies practices.

“Fictions and Legends” is on view at the Textile Museum of Canada until April 13, 2014.