Céline Condorelli: In the Light of What We Know

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Céline Condorelli, “In the Light of What We Know,” 2023

textile (courtesy of the artist)

Inhabiting the in-between spaces of Remai Modern, the exhibition In the Light of What We Know, invites visitors to encounter and experience the museum in new ways.

The project by Céline Condorelli asks questions about the role of museums in their communities and what these extraordinary public spaces can offer. Her artworks allow us to see, to play, to rest, to learn, and reimagine the world together when we are not ‘at work’.

Céline Condorelli makes sculptures and play structures that live in the soft edges between public and private, art and function, and work and leisure. The works are often a reminder of how art museums have evolved from a European colonial model, and that while accepted modes of display are continuously shifting, the notions of taste, culture and value celebrated in museums are often dictated by socio-economic conditions. As a nod to this history, Condorelli often includes the work of others and the legacies of those who came before her.

Condorelli’s exhibition is also being realised on a different schedule and timeframe to the normal exhibition program. It started in 2022 with Conversation Piece (Spinning) in the Cameco Children’s Play Area – a carousel that invites people to spin, play and rest. The show has since slowly unfolded throughout the museum, and will conclude with an exhibition in Connect Gallery, opening on November 21, 2024.

Condorelli will invite work by other artists who help reveal and encourage new ways of thinking and behaving in museums to be present in the gallery space throughout the exhibition. The first is Rirkrit Tiravanija, whose participatory ping-pong installation Tomorrow is the Question will be placed within In the Light of What We Know. The title of the exhibition comes from her long-term textile artwork in the windows on Level 3, which also softens the edges between inside and outside, and was installed at Remai Modern in 2023. It is a sculpture, a piece of textile art, a curtain and a frame around our view of the South Saskatchewan River and the city of Saskatoon, situated on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis. It builds on the invitation to play, rest and reflect proposed by Condorelli’s Conversation Piece (Spinning) on Level 2. 

Carousels and curtains are not typical features of modern art museums, but Condorelli is inspired by how both art and the standards for its display have evolved over time. We associate curtains with homes where they create warmth, privacy, intimacy and style, not with the formal, muted and angular spaces of public art institutions like Remai Modern. 

Textiles have been associated with women artists across cultures and time. Condorelli acknowledges the connection between textiles and women’s work, playing with scale to create contrast between hard and soft, public and domestic, visible and hidden, muted and joyful at Remai Modern, and to offer a soft, bright space for pausing between exhibitions. 

The colourful curtain reframes and filters, rather than represents our view of the South Saskatchewan River in the Northern Great Plains landscape. The artist encourages us to reflect on how these lands are represented—and by whom.