Village, 2004

Carboard, newspapers, wood, lamps
Dimension: 396 x 122 x 122 cm.

Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal Collection

With Village, Blain erects a tower out of bricks which resemble little rectangular houses punctuated here and there with windows. These papier mâché bricks are made out of newspapers she has been collecting over the years, with articles on and images of conflict and wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Irak, among others, combined with stock exchange quotations. (…)

Blain’s tower, the symbol of an architecture that brings people together – in the utopian fashion in the work of Tatlin or in the purely mercantile way of the World Trade Center- does not reveal its precariousness. It is the viewer’s gaze, after is as assimilated the tower’s fragility, that deduces this and perceives the deceptive framework.

– Thérèse St-Gelais, From Dwellings to Territories, Dominique Blain, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2004