Moncton native Rebecca Belliveau’s exhibit Carnaval Red questions basic human needs through many different forms and will be on display at the Charlotte Street Art Centre from Jan. 23 to March 2.
“The series itself is really questioning meditation. It’s looking for insight and at the same time sharing my own insight with the viewer in a very subconscious way,” says Belliveau.
The exhibit’s name was inspired by Belliveau’s earlier work in Montreal while she was studying under the artist Irene Whittome. Her poetry, which she called Carnaval, spelt with an “A” instead of an “I” refers to what is carnal. Belliveau is questioning who humans are as animals and turning it into a website for a final project.
“It’s funny how when you’re creative I think that you work in cycles and you come back to the things you didn’t quite resolve, creatively speaking, and Carnaval, my writing on the Carnaval and such, those were things I had not resolved yet, so naturally in the creative mode I came back to it.”
Carnaval Red combines photography, poetry, painting and heavy texture in a way that attempts to reach an emotional or abstract feeling for the viewers, as opposed to sending a specific message. The work touches on several questions Belliveau addresses about humans and their role in societies.
“What is a functional society? Why is it this way and how does it relate to the nature of humans? Not just the physical nature of the human or the animal nature, but also the spiritual nature of humans.”
The Carnaval Red is different from Belliveau’s previous series, Persona, which she describes as a more cerebral and involved interaction. “It flowed right into it,” she says Carnaval Red is more raw.
“It touches upon the question of who we are, not just who we are, but why we become the way that we are as a society and as humans. The way that we function.”
