This art exhibit about self-pleasure turns real people's erotic fantasies into playful linocuts

Contains explicit content.

"Is there anything more elemental than the act of masturbating?" The thought comes to mind while looking at the dynamic artwork across from me inside the makeshift waiting room at Atelier Circulaire, one of Montreal's premier print studios and artist-run-centres. Waiting for the artist arkadi lavoie lachapelle to join me, I can't help but stare at Se toucher: la ronde (2022), a rectangular image made with white ink printed directly onto the surface of the navy blue wall that graphically depicts an outdoor masturbation scene.

Like a comic strip, lively and playful, the drawing of someone pleasuring themselves in the wilderness, surrounded by grass, plants, trees, and other flora, feels both illicit and liberating. Suddenly aware that I am also being watched by passersby, who can see into the gallery through the large glass windows that frame the space, I blush and look down at my feet. I wonder, "Is there anything more familiar than the shame of our own deepest sexual fantasies?"

lavoie lachapelle, who uses they/them pronouns, is no stranger to tackling difficult subjects with loaded social and political undertones in their art. Best known in Quebec for their bold and striking performance art practice, they often touch on overarching issues of patriarchy, capitalism, and other forms of power and exploitation using a contemporary feminist analysis. A 2020 finalist for the prestigious Prix Pierre-Ayot, a yearly prize handed out to a Montreal visual artist under the age of 35, they also recently turned to more conventional forms of artmaking like lino printing. 

Linocut, as it is also known, is a technique where a sheet of linoleum is carved with a sharp knife to create an image through relief. The linoleum is then inked with a roller and impressed on paper, fabric, or any other flat surface. In Alchemical Masturbation: The waves, the exhibition at Atelier Circulaire, lavoie lachapelle presents their first solo exhibition of printed works, putting the traditional art of linocut to the service of freed libidinal dreams.

When lavoie lachapelle joins me in the gallery, sitting on sterile white plastic chairs, I ask about this recent turn to linocut from performance art. While most might see these two artforms as worlds apart, they instead connect them: "In performance art, you need the presence of an audience, in a visceral way, to complete the work. Printmaking similarly requires a collective act of resource gathering and sourcing. It is a profoundly community-based discipline, as well as being linked to feminist and D.I.Y. practices from the 1960s."

This connection characterizes many of the prints in Alchemical Masturbation, which in most cases literally depict people performing acts of self-pleasure in a landscape of their own imagination. It also hints at lavoie lachapelle's social practice, which is intimately dependent on collaboration with others to take shape.

Reflecting on the handful of people who offered their sexual fantasies to be depicted by lavoie lachapelle in Alchemical Masturbation, the artist reveals the process behind each finished image: "We begin by doing an interview where I take notes, then I draw from these notes and send them a first sketch. They then send feedback, and I adjust the drawing." 

While each print tells a different story, through its narrative, size, and support, the illustration style that irrevocably brings them together is lavoie lachapelle's own. Through the artist's linocut, which is printed on various material surfaces like paper, hospital gowns, gypsum board, and gold leaf, the scene comes alive. It is no longer a repressed fantasy, the result of a "western medicine that has traumatized the collective mind over the centuries," they say, but an externalization of our inner life.

Take, for example, Se toucher: pool party (2022), one of the main pieces on view in the gallery where the act of a character touching themselves in a luxurious checkered bathroom is front and centre. With a combination of light blue, crimson, and white inks, lavoie lachapelle gives verve to the imagined desires of Jeannie Kamins, a retired artist turned realtor in her 80s living in Vancouver. 

In the print, we see an older woman lying in a bathtub and smiling, one hand resting languidly on the edge while the other gently pulls at an exposed nipple ring. Another long-haired character reaches from outside of the tub, hand stretched into the water where it disappears into ripples, which suggests some sort of underwater activity. 

The busy scene also has a curious cat peaking over the tub (because who hasn't been interrupted by a house pet?), a rubber duck, a pile of books on a side table which includes The Second Sex by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, and a lit candle. Despite the chaos, in which the eye of the viewer wanders endlessly to observe new details, the overall environment is one of joy, pleasure, and fulfilled sexuality.

"My goal was not to find an 80-year-old to create an intergenerational work with," says lavoie lachapelle about Kamins, but the fortuitous connection allowed them to explore the different taboos surrounding masturbation that specifically affect older women. Kamins is especially well-situated, having created her own self-described "erotic art" in her youth, as well as being a part of the second-wave feminist art movement on the Canadian West Coast. 

In Se toucher: pool party, lavoie lachapelle pays homage to Kamins by recreating one of her erotic drawings on the wall of the bathroom as well as citing an iconic photograph by Lynda Benglis, an American visual artist and stalwart of the 1970s feminist art movement. These nods to feminist art history are what make lavoie lachapelle's work so compelling, interpreting beautifully vibrant scenes of personalized sexual fantasy in linocuts while inlaying innumerable signs and symbols to commemorate ongoing legacies of women's liberation.

The history of repressed masturbation, which is central to understanding the exhibition, is described in a small zine that is available at the entrance of Alchemical Masturbation. With an accompanying text by AM Trépanier, a local artist-researcher, the zine also ties together the origins of pornographic imagery and the printing press, connecting the suppression of women's sexuality to their objectification in the 19th century. We also learn about the origins of lavoie lachapelle's use of linocuts, which stems from their own personal trauma on a West Coast road trip. The creation of hand-drawn images to climax while masturbating helped them reclaim their sexual freedom. This initial series of experimental linocuts from 2019, printed onto National Geographic magazine cut-outs and sent to friends as postcards, was the genesis of the broader Alchemical Masturbation project.

Midway through our conversation at Atelier Circulaire, lavoie lachapelle invites me out of the proto-waiting area into a smaller annex where a medical table sits in the middle of the space. A pair of stirrups and an examination lamp positioned at the end of the table evoke an invasive gynecological medical context. Disturbing the installation, a "Magical Wand," a commonly used vibrator invented in the late 1960s, cheekily rests on a wooden shelf fastened to the table. Further unsettling the sanitized medical context are two of lavoie lachapelle's linocuts, Se toucher: l'aurore (2022) and Se toucher: l'orgasme de naissance (2022). The first is a figure masturbating on a rooftop printed on disposable blue bed pad covering the table and the second is a blue medical gown pinned to the white wall with the printed scene of a person giving birth while using a sex toy.

"While installing, I kept wondering if people might come in asking to see a family doctor," says lavoie lachapelle, commenting on the hypervisibility of the installation for people walking by Atelier Circulaire and the ongoing crisis in Quebec healthcare. Julie Bruneau, the administrative director at the artist-run-centre, confirms that they have rarely had so many people stop by their windows to observe an exhibition and even take pictures with their smartphones. "One morning," she says, "we opened the gallery and a few people were huddled together at the window deep in discussion about the work."

For Anne Florentiny, the person whose dream is depicted in Se toucher: l'aurore and Se toucher: l'orgasme de naissance, the experience of sharing their sexual imaginary with lavoie lachapelle was a gentle one.

"It was very liberating," they say when I reach them over a video call, "because it's rare to have this kind of space to talk about your masturbation fantasies. I didn't feel like an object of study or instrumentalized in any way. There was a lot of care."

When I ask Florentiny, who is also a visual artist, how they felt about seeing their internal world depicted in linocut and publicly exhibited at Atelier Circulaire, they address the collectivity of Alchemical Masturbation: "Once I transmitted my story to arkadi, it no longer fully belonged to me. It allowed me to see it from another angle. When I saw the installation, there was something moving, of course, because it's my story, but when I consider it within the ensemble of the show, it clearly speaks to the others."

Echoing lavoie lachapelle's own care, Florentiny reminds us that as an audience, penetrating this inner hearth of sexual desire, it is important to show similar self-reflection."We should enter the space with humility and sincerity." 

Beyond their aesthetic allure and prowess, lavoie lachapelle's linocuts strike a chord in their daring presentation of an otherwise taboo and repressed subject. Attentively presenting the masturbation fantasies of women-identifying and non-binary peoples from different backgrounds and generations provides a needed environment of encounter. "I find it marvellous for this space to exist," says Florentiny. "It's a privilege to be part of the process as well as having access to the intimate stories of others."

Alchemical Masturbation: the waves runs to December 3, 2022 at Atelier Circulaire. On November 17, 2022, arkadi lavoie lachapelle will be in conversation with Moridja Kitenge Bara, the artistic director of Atelier Circulaire. On December 3, lavoie lachapelle will be joined by the individuals whose stories they tell in the linocuts, who will each discuss their contribution to the project.