CAMILLE RAJOTTE
artiste en arts visuels
Jouer avec le feu, 2024
EN COLLECTIF AVEC HUGO THIBAUDEAU
Sentiers culturels, Gatineau
Fire is both comforting and threatening. Both mysterious and dangerous. It imposes a limit. But aren’t we playing with this limit?
This artwork is inspired by this real or potential danger and transposes it into a critical reflection on the current ecological context. It is also inspired by the match, this small piece of wood with great incendiary power and which was the subject of an industrial empire in the old city of Hull at the end of the 19th century.
Merry-go-view, 2023
Passages Insolites, EXMURO arts publics, Québec
This interactive installation challenges the overly hasty, linear way we travel from place to place instead of taking the time to stop and contemplate the richness of the world around us. The open seats beckon the public to climb aboard and begin pedalling, initiating a gentle circular movement that affords a new perspective—one that might let us take the full measure of our environment.
https://passagesinsolites.com/en/oeuvres/merry-go-view-2023/
Incline, 2018
Third Shift Public Art Festival, Saint John (NB)
This installation highlights a series of windows cut at ground level by the elevation of Grannan Street. Taking the form of these windows and their brick frame, the project is concretized by three modules deposited on the ground. These in turn play with the incline and become a short staircase. While being useful, this project wish to draw attention on an architectural feature often seen in Uptown St John.
À deux c'est mieux!, 2017
Art Souterrain Public Art Festival,
Palais des Congrès, Montréal
À deux, c’est mieux! is a very simple and delicate intervention that gives a look to the common space, its design as well as its possible uses. The interest of this project is in the experience that people will make of it. While the shape and the movement reminds the seesaw swing, the ambiguous position of such an object of amusement refers to the horse swaying in exchange for a few coins. Then, this project asserts, in its functioning, the idea that pleasure is linked to a shared experience with another. Indeed, the swing can only function by having an accomplice in the game. Both seats, however, are back, and this, to affirm the individuality of the experience, even while sharing a common reality.
The Inverted Square, 2016
Artwork realised in collaboration with the artist residency at Jiwar Creacio I Societat, Barcelona (Spain)
The Inverted Square (La place inversée) represents the empty space impressed into the urban fabric by the square. The work, while directly interacting with its immediate context, fulfils a twin vocation as both sculpture and street furniture, with multiple levels each providing places for adults and kids to sit, climb or play. The project is designed to encourage people to take a break from the constant movement of city life by encouraging passerby to stop, interrogate, take a seat and, above all, be more attentive to the urban environment they occupy.
Thanks to Mireia Estrada, Maria-Jesus Bronchal and Fernando Bravo for their help and collaboration in this project.
Fais à ta guise!, 2015
Project realized during an artists residency at Espace Projet, Montreal (Canada)
This project questions the habits in the common space. Various removable street furniture (chairs of pavement, gaming tables, slide and stools) have been added so the people can appropriate them and move them according to their needs. By requesting the use, the installation does not occupy a location in a exclusive way, but shares a space with the city-dweller and participates to the active life of the urban environment. In this way, the project aims at fitting into the habits of use of the urban everyday life while creating new possibilities and visual diversity. Finally, the added elements are custom-made for the environment of integration what restricts their movement to this precise place given the usual ineffectiveness that they would have somewhere else.
Uselessness, 2014
Art piece realised during an artist residency at ZK/U Zentrum für kunst und urbanistik, Berlin (Germany)
Uselessness is a project based on an urban intervention made on two existing park benches located in Moabit neighbourhood, in Berlin. The benches are constructed out of steel frames which makes them almost impossible to sit on. The project, by recovering those frames with wood, intends to offer a sculptural intervention that reimagines the benches as abstract shapes while also making them functional.
Circulations, 2014
Projet d'intégration de l'art à l'architecture, Université Laval, Québec
Circulations questions the incomplete form of the column and plays with the oblique angle suggesting the absence of a peice. The column is completed by the addition of a triangular module translated and wedged between the ceiling and floor. The module is presented as a monolith at the entrance to the School of Visual Arts. It is massive and imposing while being of great sensitivity through organic texture of the material. By placing a mirror on the oblique face of the column and on the face opposite to it by the module light and the movement of the street is used to make the lobby more alive. This mirror game, in addition to stage the constant flow of Charest Boulevard, creates repetition of patterns and colors.
Crédit photo : Renée Méthot
La colonne Morris, 2013
Projet d'intégration de l'art à l'architecture, Université Laval, Québec
This proposal questions the incompleteness of the column and uses the triangular shape formed by this missing piece. The shape comes first merge at the base of the column and then is detached in a very flexible movement. This gives life to the missing piece and active it as a foreign element that opposes the rigor of the right angle that it should have formed.
Crédit photo : Renée Méthot
À deux c'est mieux!, 2017
Art Souterrain ; festival d'art contemporain
Palais des Congrès, Montréal
25 pieds X 20 pieds X 40 pieds
À deux c'est mieux! est une intervention très simple et délicate qui porte un regard sur l'espace commun, son aménagement ainsi que ses usages possibles. L'intérêt de ce projet se trouve dans l'expérience que les gens feront de l'installation. Alors que la forme et le mouvement rappellent les balançoires à levier, la position ambigüe d'un tel objet d'amusement réfère au cheval qui se balance en échange de quelques pièces de monnaie. Ensuite, ce projet affirme, dans son fonctionnement même, l'idée selon laquelle le plaisir est lié au partage d'une expérience avec l'autre. En effet, la balançoire ne peut fonctionner qu'en ayant un acolyte dans le jeu. Les deux sièges se font toutefois dos, et ce, afin d'affirmer l'individualité du vécu, même dans le partage d'une réalité commune.