Les Fermiéres Obsédées: Happy F.O. to You!

By means of a parodic approach, Les Fermières Obsédées (F.O), push back the barriers of reality, be it through the disproportion of the measures they use or by the displacement of meaning they transmit.

To accomplish this, F.O have appropriated the modus operandi of le cercle des fermières, a folkloric Quebecois women’s organization, and integrated it into their artistic approach: an approach combining action, installation, and the fabrication of objects in view of an event or a moment. As with farmwives of the past, living within the restraints of conforming to the day’s ideology, F.O have for inspiration the constraints of the world in which they live. Therefore their work is a reflection of the social and physical limits of individuals living in an organized society. It is a way of life in perfect conformity with the constraints of today’s ideological aspirations. This enlistment acts upon F.O as a reconciliation with the world, to consent to be in touch with the weight of living in an organized civilization. What follows is a revealing relationship with the world, but also a way to belong to it.

Agreeing to follow an approach, they rid themselves of their individual identities. Acquiring a ritual that involves wearing a uniform, they restrain themselves to a fixed image, searching for identity, which, despite everything, submits to the evolution of their direction. The essence of their work exerts an attraction through visual research and repulsion due to the absurdity of the mechanism, the development of a true and human fragility. F.O., by way of a plot, wishes to subtly ingrain themselves in our minds, scribing an image which confronts people with their own daily grid, for what they see is a reality parallel to their own.

They express, by way of their field of work, a playful vision of the way man combines time and mannerisms in his vital approach. F.O. are comparable to a micro-society which must function as a whole, but yet is continually put to the test by the restraints of individuality, where each one must go it alone against and despite all. This outlook interweaves itself in a working ritual where manufacture and action are symbolically equal. The vertigo of an absurdity which, brought to exhaustion, causes a dramatization of time. These acts of continuity which, by their repetition, complicate the weight of them. Where ennui, caused by duration, transforms itself to a certain interest, or even to, a second state.