Biography

The artist duo MeyerMétivier DesignHaus formed during a hard picketing outside the gates of their university in 2016. The duo is composed of artists Lieven Meyer and Charles-Antoine Blais Métivier, both of whom hold master’s degrees from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Individually, their creations have been presented across Canada, Germany, Italy, Russia and France.

Approach and works on display

MeyerMétivier DesignHaus is interested in the aesthetics of commodification and kitsch. Their borrowings from the industrial design of cheap serial products allow them to explore issues related to social sculpture in a context of mass production. Through the detour of marketing strategies, MMDH also questions the extent of the means necessary to address the socio-political or cultural causes they are invited to comment on. Indeed, at the heart of their production, the principles of recovery, revalorization, and DIY always betray their commercial intentions.

Mode de survie (2020-2021)

The Montreal housing crisis that has been raging since the summer of 2020 has forced hundreds of citizens to live as nomads along the highways. This situation inspired the sculptural collective MeyerMétivier DesignHaus to create a collection of outerwear made from promotional images on luxury condo building sites. While the housing problem has been worsening for years, the sight of these dreamy promotional images in downtown Montreal has become offensive because they promote a fashionable lifestyle that does not fit the economic reality of Montrealers. Rather than vandalize the images through graffiti, the artists preferred to remove the visuals surrounding the construction sites in order to attack the prestige and the dream sold by these promoters. Realizing the exceptional quality of the advertising material they were stealing from the construction sites, MMDH began to develop outdoor clothing and accessories that took advantage of the attributes of the stolen images. Cut, folded and recomposed into sewing patterns, the plastic canvases abandoned their two-dimensional surface, and the physical qualities of the materials were expressed in the form of clothing and accessories that addressed the direct needs of this new population of urban nomads.

Works by the artist