Confessions d'une passante

In the fall of 2010, during a creative residency at the Caravanserail artist-run centre, Magali Baribeau-Marchand collected a multitude of confidences on the promenade along the St. Lawrence River in Rimouski. For the occasion, she had built a mobile device on wheels: a giant birdhouse of sorts, which served as a mobile confessional for a week in November. Dozens of strangers wrote to her in exchange for a moment of contemplation in this cabin, which can accommodate only one person at a time.

For each of these confidences, she then built a birdhouse made of white ceramic tiles on which was engraved the said confidence. Then, she went to the Magdalen Islands in May 2011, at the invitation of the AdMare contemporary art centre, so that these miniature monuments, singular and fragile, could be exhibited and then adopted in exchange for a new confidence.

Magali Baribeau-Marchand

Magali Baribeau-Marchand has called this project Les Confidences; it is one of displacement, correspondence, exchange, travel and self-giving. Finally, of a profoundly human sensitivity. This book constitutes the third phase and also becomes an object bearing witness to these exchanges between specific strangers. The 107 authors of the confidences in this book are the strangers who agreed to give themselves to Magali in writing during this project. And now her drawings are intertwined with them. Finally, from deported to adopted, these confidences now take on a life of their own, a unique character. They travel to you, through you.