Ensemble Nomad.e (July 26, 2017 – July 18, 2022)

Ensemble nomad.e has been a project Gail Bourgeois and Emily Rose Michaud conceived in 2017. We designed monthly nomadic residencies to take us throughout the region to different bodies of water. We have been doing these process-based residencies on-site since July 2018 and July 2022 will be our culminating season. We are taking today to reflect on what we have learned from our experiences working together on site. We are sharing how we have grown and how our respective art practices have changed in accord with the various places we’ve visited and developed attachment to over the last 5 years. 

From our first meeting in 2017, we developed the collective intentions that would guide our practice. We feel the accomplishment of having met our objectives. Through a feminist lens, we defined what we would claim as women. We took the necessary time to identify what was missing in our lives and in our work. We looked at what we needed in a world that demands our constant attention. So, we slowed down. Claiming creative time and space for the body to rest, to be present with the land around us has served as a welcome outlet and shifted our personal and collective grief into renewed agency for the contributions we make to our respective communities.

Ensemble Nomad.e has been a multi-year project making visual works that emerge from the distinction of place near a body of water. Working seasonally over the last five years, Ensemble Nomad.e has moved from place to place within the local bioregion. We have learned to listen and to better understand both the natural world and human activity. We have created for ourselves the conditions necessary to slow down and be present with the world around us, including the reality of the horrors and joys of being alive.

Defining our intentions helped us succeed over five years. They were:

– To face creatively — with courage — the social climate and ecological crisis of our current moment;
– To consider our creative practice in relation to the whole of a bioregion;
– To make art work that emerges from our wanderings;
– To practice speaking and acting on matters of common concern;
– To embody knowledge that translates self and other, including body/land/memory;
– To slow down, think relationally and invite diverse collaborators to inform our project.

The result of our endeavor is that we are richer not only as artists, but also as human beings. We feel more connected to where we live now in a way that didn’t exist before. This is only the beginning!

– Gail and Emily, July 18, 2022. 

To see the archives, go to Instagram and follow:
@ensemble.nomad.e

To learn more about the artists, visit:
/ gailbourgeois.ca
/ emilyrosemichaud.com