Textile sculptures detail beauty and fragility

Textile artist Jannick Deslauriers takes delicate fabrics and creates detailed sculptures of objects that seem to be lost in time, broken and decaying. Her work evokes a sense of the ephemeral nature of commonplace items that we assume are solid and unchanging—telephone poles, an apartment building or a piano, for example.

The Montreal-based artist’s recent work for an exhibit at the gallery Art Mur Montréal, “Sentence, soufflé et linceul” (breath and shroud) is a full-scale automobile that looks as though it was in a terrible crash and was left in a junkyard to decay. At the same time, the work is intricate and beautiful in its detail.

To create the piece, Deslauriers began by methodically researching images of intact and damaged vehicles. She wanted to convey the way in which planned obsolescence is a symbol of our times. Even more than that, it has become a geopolitical issue.

Deslauriers renders her sculptures in drawings by outlining the edges with dark thread, imitating the pencil outline of a sketch and arranging pieces in 3-D perspective to create the experience of walking through a drawing. She used silk, aluminum mesh and tulle to build the work, creating a sculpture that has a beautiful transparent quality while expressing the fragility of abandonment and deterioration. For more information, visit www.jannickdeslauriers.com.