In this, Cynthia Girard-Renardâ€s second solo exhibition at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, the work was inspired by the film of the same title, Love and Anarchy by Lina Wertmüller. Large acrylic paintings in dirt brown, green and bright pink, they are fashioned in an old cartoon style. The background consists of prints from the bark of trees and the faces of the figures derive from the artistâ€s own butt prints in gouache forming the mask-like heads of the characters. We are called to remember Carolee Schleemanâ€s body prints, the sex-positive and earth-oriented work of Annie Sprinkle and the erotic, female-centric art of Dorothy Iannone. Girard-Renardâ€s paintings draw us into the sexy and amusing interplay of mother earth, performers and nurse characters with authority figures, perhaps being treated for their fascism and misogyny. We are also presented with the artistâ€s oft-present wordplay, as well as playful forays into subversive sexuality, history and politics.

While Girard-Renard seems to believe that love is anarchy and that sexuality has the power to overturn corrupt patriarchal power structures, Wertmüller has a more circuitous attitude. In Love and Anarchy, the hero is an innocent farm boy drawn into a plot to assassinate Mussolini. The drama is largely situated in an Italian brothel, and the hero is aided by an anarchist prostitute. Complicating matters, he falls in love with another prostitute, leaving him torturously torn between passionate, blissful life and a frightful, violent death. Her film raises questions about love, violence, and power while presenting problems with anarchy and revolution. Is personal love a wrench in the gears of anarchy? Is love is the opiate of the masses? Is resistance truly futile, yet heroic, foolish efforts must be made anyway? Is love is the opposite of fascism? We are reminded of the inevitability of love and death, and of the tenuous, but precious nature of freedom. The film raises questions but doesnâ€t give clear answers, as is the way with good films. Although it received criticism from many feminists of the time for how women were portrayed as prostitutes, in hindsight we can now see that there is also an anarchic side to prostitution, and the film can be seen in this light. Prostitution falls outside of tradition and marriage, and it is outside of love but comes from a place of seeking connection and intimacy. The female leads—prostitutes all—in this film were loving, human characters with real passions and struggles of their own, well-rounded characters.

At the end of the film, the quote from Errico Malatesta appears: “I wish to repeat my horror at attacks, which besides being bad, are in and of themselves stupid because they harm the very cause they are trying to serve. But those assassins are also saints and heroes, and they will be celebrated once the brutal facts are forgotten, and all that is remembered is the idea that inspired them and the martyrdom that made them saints.” Thus, Wertmüller implies that violence isnâ€t the best method whereby fascism may be ended. Then what is?  Cynthia Girard-Renardâ€s reply conveyed through this series, is that love is, sexuality is, the rise of the feminine principle and celebration of the body and the earth are the answer. The paintings in the artistâ€s series focus on earthy browns, vivid green and luscious pinks, reminiscent of the earth and tender places of flesh. In Câ€est la fin de la monde, Mother Earth reclines, reading the French translation of Fifty Shades of Gray. The eye is kept busy with the textures of the tree rubbings in the background contrasting in colour from the viridian green of the snakeskin figures dancing above her. We see figures giving way to abandon, with the reflection of a factory smokestack in the eye of one character, and a mushroom cloud, an atomic bomb, perhaps, girded by a horizon made of hearts. Do we make love while the earth burns down? It seems to say, “this horror exists, yet we do too, and we go on loving.”

Pesistons ensemble et unis features police whose power is subverted as their forms are made humourous. One officer, face bearing Girard-Renardâ€s bum print as ever, is wearing a cheetah print thong and fishnets, and his feet terminate in ice cream cones. The other officer has limbs made from tree limbs, so his body rhymes with the dark background. Theyâ€re goofy, playful, ridiculous. Their power is taken away and they are made into figures of fun.

Infirmière activism shows a nurse wearing a strange net outfit paired with a strap-on, partnered with a patient wearing nothing but boxers and argyle socks. Psilocybin mushrooms are tucked away into the corner, and the figures themselves are repeated in miniature to the left of the canvas. The atmosphere is one of the dopey intoxication of pleasure. A balm for a sick world.   In Triolet antifasciste, prints make two of the trioâ€s heads into pumpkin-like forms, one figure of which bears penises instead of fingers. Above, the birds say: les fascists sont partis ouf. These antifascists seem to be performers, their outsized shoes are transparent and one figureâ€s outfit is striped and animated by the face of a living animal. The female figure in pink has exposed breasts and vagina and embraces Mr. Penishands. She has arms made of foliage, again harkening to the idea of woman as connected to nature and pleasure.

Another pumpkin-headed figure appears in Viva la vagina, this time a woman who emits a pink cloud from between her legs which says “good spirit” while dancing with a Medusa-like figure that is standing in its head, with the words Viva la Vagina written across the chest. In a canvas also adorned with condoms and candy, we can read at various points, fou good spirit, jâ€ai bonne nouvelles, viva la vagina and “resistance against the regulation of our bodies”. This one seems to be about pure joy and celebration. Finally, Plaisir fétichiste dâ€une militante antifasciste consists of a foot-licking male figure sitting on the floor, orange penis engorged, as he reveres the elephant-faced pink female figure. He is snail-footed, and hearts emanate from his groin. The woman says “no place for hate”.

Cynthia Girard-Renardâ€s work is often highly political, insightfully historical, but always filled with love, playfulness, and humour. She never lectures or condemns or brings us down, quite the contrary. Her series Love and Anarchy takes inspiration from a classic film and gives it her own take, one filled with hope, that love and sex can be anarchic forces capable of enacting change through personal relationships. We are reminded of the absurdity of focusing on personal issues while the world is burning down, but also how life goes on, no matter what happens in the political sphere. We may as well take what happiness we can where we can find it. And perhaps that can still make the world a better place, in the small motions of joy.

Marie-Christine Dubé and John Boyle-Singfield, curators of the exhibition Harder, Better, Faster at Galerie Trois Points, set out to create a myth which “reinforces the empowerment of womenâ€s identities,” an ambitious aim that it achieved very well. As I made my way through the exhibition I wondered if this show did what it set out to do, or whether it simply, but fascinatingly, reflected the status quo. The first impression on entering the gallery was one of paradox; the sleek polish contrasting with the gritty and the rough. We are inducted into a realm of “projected images” which explore the representation of the self and the other through a primarily feminist lens, delving into the complex issues of gender and cultural identity.

The first encounter is with a video installation of young Montreal new media artist, Mégane Voghell, a piece called How to Remove a Lady from its Flesh. The video is projected on a board surrounded by a yellow rectangle which appears to be spray painted on the wall. Jutting out from the video presentation is a simple table decorated with various photos of other simple tables of its kind, some with happy and sad faces made up of crustaceans. The video is a non-linear collage of influences and impressions, itself seeming to question the oppressive implications of female self-representation in our society; images which range from a girl plastering on concealer, her image viewed only through a tablet computer to another woman draining a huge blister, a picture-within-a-picture surrounded by blurred faces and forms. Virtual reality collides with the camouflaged dimensions that we create for ourselves and are inundated with continuously. A womanâ€s world is a flood of images, expectations and ideals we are supposed to live up to. A nude pregnant woman sits in a bathtub outside while a toddler runs around, and she separates from a drawn image of herself, which seems to be a Photoshop filter. Digitally-created red hair forms a towering figure with a pornstarâ€s body. Similar to a computer game visitors can select from faces without hair and hair without faces, which can be selected and chosen at will to represent the self. Meanwhile words like “short memories and unsharp masks” flash on the screen. A yellow square follows a raw young womanâ€s practised smiles which belie the anxiety in her eyes: “Shy and daring at the same time.” This fragmented, repellant yet fascinating piece successfully subverts narrative expectations and usual space, bringing you into an alternate reality. It is quite a mature presentation especially for one of Voghellâ€s age, and it will be very interesting to see what she produces in the future.

Next are Stéphanie De Couto Costaâ€s three lovely stone lithographs, each showing a woman in a state of transformation, suspended in a void of white. De Couto Costa is a second generation immigrant artist who uses feelings of cultural dissonance to retell and thwart fairy tales in works on paper inspired by feminist writing and poetry. She says her series The Bitch and the Blond is “inspired by vanity portraits and the works of women storytellers.” Notions of transformation and duality wrestle with sensually-charged portraits, women caught in a morphological state, half-this and half-that. Road Kill shows a woman crawling seductively on all fours, howling from her wolf-head, her body bearing a shroud like a skin. Mimesis shows a raven-woman, head on backwards, back facing us. Which side is front? From which side of ourselves do we express and perceive? A long veil or train of feather-cloth trails down her front. Clothing, to De Couto Costa, seems to act not only as a decorative, protective layer but a psychologically protective one as well and a signifier of identity in transformation. Motherâ€s Ghosts is not an anthropomorphic transformation, rather it seems as if a tribal costume is in a state of becoming, or is perhaps overtaking the woman. Roots creep in, the figure is headless as she disintegrate into petals or into the earth, a state of disappearance. Feathers, braids and textures cluster in chaotic but elegant profusion and make me think of the disconnect many of us feel from our heritage, and particularly of the pain that must be felt by indigenous peoples. De Couto Costa works in multiples in her process-oriented printmaking practise, and seems to meditate upon ideas of replication—of story, identity and of people themselves, continuously birthed and passing on knowledge and problems.

Olga Chagaoutdinova, native to Russia, but educated in Montreal at Concordia, is a talented conceptual photographer who captures lives in countries caught in the awkward in-between state between communism and capitalism, Russia and Cuba specifically. This series of photographs of female prison inmates are intimate portraits taken after long discussions with each inmate. At first glance, it isnâ€t apparent that they are prisoners, as they are allowed to wear normal clothes, and their prison badges arenâ€t glaringly obvious; they simply look worn out by life, possibly former drug users. Knowing that the photographs were taken after what must have been an emotional interview adds poignancy and humanity to the grid-like portraits, which in their intimacy, also reveal the walls and defenses in their visage.

Montreal artist Dominique Sirois†installation, Mimesis Trinyty, a conceptual space set in a fictional world of finance, is a video on a screen of a digital woman with a certain likeness to Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction, reciting a computer generated text which combines the writings of André Orléan and Flaubertâ€s Madame Bovary. Round, dark pillows scatter the floor and there is a leaking of boundaries of sound and matter around the gallery as oddly-shaped sculptures are scattered sparingly from room to room and the bland computer voice echoes soft words in French. Nub-shaped polystyrene sculptures with the appearance of concrete are piled on top of each other, forming lines of replication with a few tiny indeterminate objects resting on them. A small workout weight rests on an amorphous sculpture. The wall behind the video is papered with black and white simplified womenâ€s faces, another nod to replication and feminine identity. Sirois frequently works with ideas of finance, and this installation is no exception. This financial world opens with a desk, the seat of power of a company perhaps, and the text speaks of muscular training. Merged with Madame Bovary, one cannot help but think of the role of women as property throughout the ages, their lives of increasing free agency and their current role in the financial world. We gain more power and “muscle”, but what have we got ourselves into? A complex world where we must flex our power even more dramatically to keep up. Harder, better and faster. The interpretation is left open and curious, which is part of what makes the piece a success.  The virtual reality/alternate reality presented here is a reflection of our own world, another quantum possibility. There is a sense of being trapped, as Bovary was, by her finances and need to spend to fill a void.

Olivia McGilchrist is a photographer and video artist of Franco-Jamaican origin, whose work has largely dealt with post-colonial white identity in a predominantly black culture, and her sense of marginalization. She often takes this challenging subject for her lovely portraits, and her street nickname “Whitey” has formed what has become a recurrent character in her work, the artist appearing in a white mask. McGilchrist considers whiteness to be a mental construct as much as a physical one. This immersive video installation, From Many Sides, is a departure from that theme, a side step, and it seems the artist has dealt with her issues of being an outsider for now, here merging myth very successfully in a beautiful piece. We encounter the River Mumma, or river mother/mermaid figure, a black woman swimming in the ocean, wearing a white mask—but she isnâ€t Whitey. The white-masked black figure also occurs in the Jamaican folk dance, Jankunu, so McGilchrist is exploring not only her personal identity but a cultural and mythical one as well. In this installation, lucid colours and multiple tracks blend from one to the other, with a soft, dreamy soundtrack of birds, whispers and lapping waves. We feel connection rather than dislocation. We see girls walking down an overgrown road, a family gathering at a grotto, a girl in white shorts gathering water with crockery in a river. We feel the thick haze of colour and lush emotional states. Crashing waves, pure beauty, a magical invocation on a primordial, sleepy island. It is an overwhelmingly lovely mosaic of overlaying ripples, forms and reflections. The pervasive sense of place gives you a feeling of the power of nature upon the culture. McGilchrist deals with collective and intimate memory and as well as identity in a postcolonial landscape very effectively here.

The finely curated works in Harder, Better, Faster serve to question and illuminate the often dark and oppressive spheres of influence, self-censorship and self-representation—mirrored in those processes by the other or the powers that be— as well as the passing on of ideas, of mimesis, of cultural connection and disconnection.

I first encountered Farajâ€s work this year at Papier in Joyce Yahouda Galleryâ€s booth, tucked away around a corner, presumably because of their explicit erotic content. The lovely, bleeding watercolour images of recumbent women exposing themselves in a sexual and unabashed attitude were quite striking, and I found myself drawn to them over and over throughout the event. While this solo exhibition, The Whole World Has Gone Joyously Mad, at Joyce Yahouda Gallery also deals with female nudity, the take is decidedly more political. Ranging from whimsical yet powerful portraits of Muslim feminists to representations of the Montreal tuition hike activists, this installation by Faraj honours the courage of those women who use their nudity to protest. According to Faraj, they inevitably also display their vulnerability by such bold acts which use their own bodies to make a statement. To me, that is a further testament of their courage.

One enters this installation by passing through two sentinels—phallic tree trunks, tipped with a cadmium red that almost glows and drips down the shaft. To exit the installation, one must also pass these guards, each of which bears the title Lingam. Lingams are egg-shaped, or round-tipped, pillar-shaped representations of the penis, usually in stone, which are honoured in India as symbols of the great god Shiva, the destroyer. They make an intriguing counterpoint to the feminist celebration on the wall, providing balance and seemingly, protection in the way you must walk between them to access the watercolours. They are the sacred masculine, perhaps representing the men who stand by our side and understand that the true nature of feminism is equality, not female supremacy. In India, Lingams are normally bathed in milk to be honoured, but these are tipped with red like blood, which could represent intensity of feeling, a throbbing erection, or the bleeding, vulnerable and damaged masculine principle.  I believe the ambiguity added a successful layer of mystery to this installation.

The watercolours span the largest wall of the gallery in a crowded grid which binds the portraits together in sisterhood. Faraj works in her familiar bleeding, stained style, but these are a little more hard-edged. These girls have some boundaries. They know what they want, and they want it now. Their mouths are open, their breasts bared, and often one or two arms are raised in vocalization, but their words are written on their chests.

These works are a loving tribute to those women who use their bodies to speak their minds. Farajâ€s past work has been more distinctly sexual, a diversity of bodies merged in embrace or joyful abandon, their blurred boundaries and splayed limbs reflecting a wonderful freedom, while these works are a bit more resolved, and not sexualized. They are nudity as frankness, as honesty, and as protest.

Among the many striking and successful watercolours, a few stood out as my favourites. In Free the Nipple circles represent breasts with a red dot in the center, looking like targets drawn all over her brown skin.  In another portrait, a smoking and leather-cuffed brunette has words in Arabic written on her body, as well as the name “Amina”, which is indubitably Amina Wadud, feminist cleric and professor of Islamic studies.

Considering Farajâ€s watercolour stain paintings, one cannot help but think of Helen Frankenthaulerâ€s abstract stain painting of the 50s. Faraj takes such techniques to a new level in her splendid watercolours, which go beyond political statement into a celebratory expression of joie de vivre. These women love life and will fight for the freedom to live as they want.