Les Fermières Obsédées (engl. The Obsessed Farmers’ Wives) is a performance collective, formed by four young female artists (Annie Baillargeon, Mélissa Charest, Eugénie Cliche and Catherine Plaisance), who met at art school and discovered their shared love of – not to say obsession with – fabrics, disguises and kitsch. Their chosen name alludes in an ironic manner to a familiar tradition of female creativity, that of the women’s circle and its regular meetings of communal needlework. This tradition is evoked, parodied and simultaneously transgressed when in their performances the four artists sew their dresses together, try to struggle out from inside an oversized skirt, or bury themselves in a mound of fabric patches. In 2002 the Textile Art Council of Quebec recognized this work with an award for originality and innovation in textile art.
But their work with fabrics only constitutes part of their performance practice, according to them ‘the thread of their argument, and not an end in itself.’ Their performances often resemble tableaux vivants, exquisitely laid out images that hover between a fascination with and questioning of our contemporary worship of beauty. ‘With our formal air, our too perfect clothing, we become luxury articles which the dazzled spectators looks at as if through a window.’ The actions of the four performers are reduced to a minimum, often based on the mannerisms which our quest for physical perfection generates and carried out in a highly repetitive manner. What is offered to the spectator’s gaze is four women, dressed in uniforms and wigs, performing the same set of gestures over and over; they become indistinguishable, their individual identities subsumed under a collective existence. A deliberate air of artifice, stylisation and exaggeration characterizes this work, which takes our obsession with imagery, fashion and conformity to its absurd conclusion.

Les Fermières Obsédées are as elegant as they are ironic, as polite as they are impertinent. At RHWNT, the four artists will create a performance that will continue their exploration of the social and physical limits we encounter as individuals living in a highly organised society.