Post written by Julie Cruikshank.
It’s a busy September here in Ottawa. In a city that I think can be fairly described as festival-happy, the cooling weather of fall does very little to slow the tide of events. The Ottawa Animation Festival is underway, and this year marks the very first Nuit Blanche Ottawa. Tucked in between is Festival X, Ottawa’s Photography Festival. Now in its 5th year, the festival brings photographic exhibits, workshops, and artist talks to the National Capital Region, with events taking place in galleries, art-run-centres, cafés, shops and other alternative spaces in Ottawa and Gatineau. Participating in both Festival X and Nuit Blanche is Ottawa-based photographer Geneviève Thauvette.
I spoke with Thauvette on a soggy Tuesday afternoon, a frantic last-minute interview before she jumped on a plane to Paris as part of her role with Les Jeux de la Francophonie. A short trip, considering she has to be back in time for her vernissage at Galerie St. Laurent + Hill and a performance piece that will see her dressed as Marie Antoinette popping out of a cake – both happening tomorrow night.
Her Festival X submission, Les Filles du Roi, is a series of eight photographs that tackle head-on a formative but controversial period of Canada’s history – and does so with a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek humour. In her artist’s statement, Thauvette explains that the Filles du Roi were a group of poor young women sent from France to Canada (then New France) in the 17th century, as brides of the state. Mostly orphans and widows, the girls were provided with a dowry by Louis XIV, roughly equalling one year of a working man’s salary. Once they arrived, the Filles’ sole purpose was to marry the men of the colony and begin producing as many babies as possible. “On average, they were wed within four to five months of their arrival and would bear seven to eight children,” reads Thauvette’s statement in a synopsis eerily similar to Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. Once married, Thauvette explains, the girls were often pregnant within their next ovulation: “Systematically, a nation was founded on their backs.”
Thauvette’s research took her to Quebec City, into old books and yellowed texts containing statistical information about the 737 women who came across the ocean in the early days of La Nouvelle France. She discovered that in order to facilitate quick pairings between the Coureurs de Bois and the Filles du Roi, Jean Talon, the Intendant of New France, signed an edict stating that if men were not married within 15 days of the arrival of a boatload of women they would lose their hunting and trapping rights (although this edict was not always strictly followed).
When many of these women met their husbands, they found that they did not speak the same dialect of French. “They helped to actually homogenize the French language in Canada,” says Thauvette. “And language shapes culture.” The Filles had a profound influence on Quebecois culture that is still felt; today, 50 million North Americans can trace their lineage back to the Filles du Roi.
Les Mariees. Geneviève Thauvette.
Thauvette’s works combine new and old photographic processes; each image is a digital collage assembled in Photoshop. Thauvette then tints the resulting prints with photographic oils – a technique often seen in Victorian photographic greeting cards and post-mortem photography. The series makes many nods to the French Canadian culture that the Filles du Roi helped shape, with both historical and pop culture references slyly inserted into the images.
In Les Mariees, young brides are flanked by images of Elvis Gratton, the eponymous character of the 1981 film which has become a notorious part of Quebec pop culture. The Elvises hold flags featuring bananas, referencing both the Island of Santa Banana (in the film, Bob Gratton wins a trip to the fictional island after competing in an Elvis impersonation contest), and the “banana republic” style of government that formed the political arrangement of New France. The Elvis figures are the supporters in this bizarre coat of arms.
In another image, Les Duchesses, the role of supporter is given to Bonhomme de Neige, the mascot of the Quebec winter carnival. The Bonhommes act as auctioneers while in the centre of the image a ballerina figure wears a sash identifying her as Miss Valerie, the protagonist of another Quebecois film widely viewed as a scandalous cautionary tale. “Ne fait pas ta Valerie!” became the cry of Quebecois mothers entreating their daughters not to be whores. Indeed, the Madonna/Whore complex is a prominent theme in Thauvette’s work.
Thanks to a particularly nasty lambasting by the Baron de Lahontan in his memoirs, the Filles du Roi were often branded as prostitutes – a misconception that has followed them throughout history. Likewise, more contemporary attempts to clean up their reputations have often gone too far in the other direction, according to Thauvette, portraying them as positively saintly. The reality, of course, lies somewhere in the middle, in a long-forgotten grey area that has since become Canada.
Thauvette’s use of heraldic imagery in each photograph is complexly layered, and reflects an attempt on her part to legitimize the Filles du Roi and to give proper reference to the fact that they were the founding mothers of Quebec society. Coats of arms were one of the first forms of political branding, and typically denoted prestige. They were the emblem of the higher classes, and could only be bestowed by royalty. Now, of course, we see them everywhere, particularly on liquor and soft drink bottles. (In fact, if you look closely at Thauvette’s images you will see that the field portion of her coats of arms is the Canada Dry logo.)
This new utilitarian use of what was once a hallowed and official symbol serves as an especially astute metaphor for the Filles du Roi. Their purpose was utilitarian – to act as breeders to increase the population of the colony. And yet this designation also afforded them a measure of power and cemented their importance in Canada’s history. “They had, dare I say, a very passive power,” Thauvette explains. The women could annul a marriage if they found a better match and, if widowed, tended to remarry almost immediately. “When they arrived they were sought-after merchandise.” Women’s bodies were a hot commodity in New France. “Their very sexuality afforded them a power.” This pressure to marry and to provide for a young family encouraged many men who had been Coureurs de Bois to begin homesteading and gathering assets in hopes of securing (and hanging on to) a bride – ultimately contributing to the gentrification and centralization of the colony.
Meanwhile, the women were busy making babies. The Filles du Roi had been handpicked for their resiliency and sturdiness, and as a result there was a very low infant and child mortality rate in New France. “It was a case of social selection creating natural selection,” explains Thauvette. Because of quick marriages, there was a very low rate of illegitimacy as well. Illegitimacy still happened, of course, but was met with a huge amount of social stigma, as Thauvette illustrates in Benis Soient les Bedons. The photograph depicts veiled young women (representing unwed mothers) surrounded by Catholic priests. These women were made to wear blue veils to hide their identities, and their babies were given random surnames and raised elsewhere. Thus these children had no way of tracing back their roots. The motto above the crest, “Y Portent Presque Tous Les Ans,” references Jean Talon’s assertion that the women in New France were pregnant and bore children almost every year.
Each of the photographs in the exhibition features a motto above a crest, as is common in heraldry. The mottos are all sourced from documents of the time that were used to disparage the Filles du Roi and helped to cement their reputation as whores. “By using mottos that were used to ruinous effect, I’m hoping people will see the humour of it and see the flipside,” Thauvette explains. “By using humour you often have a better ability of underlining how absurd a particular stance is.”
What Thauvette has accomplished with her series of eight works is a shrewd assessment of the very difficult position of these women in Quebec’s and Canada’s history. With its use of humour and fond references to some of the more idiosyncratic elements of Quebecois popular culture, Thauvette has cultivated an impression of the Filles du Roi as the mothers of a culture and of a nation. Surely, then, so much more than whores.
Les Filles du Roi opens this Saturday, September 22 (2pm-5pm) at Galerie St. Laurent + Hill (293 Dalhousie Street, Suite 103). The exhibition continues September 18-26.
You can also catch Geneviève Thauvette’s Nuit Blanche performance piece, Cake is Freedom/Le Gateau ou la Mort in front of the Metropolitan (Rideau & Wellington) from 8pm-9pm.
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