Ibghy & Lemmens

Montreal and Ascot Corner (Canada) 1964 y 1976

By: Roberto Díaz

Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens are a couple of Canadian artists who have worked together in many different media, from drawing and sculpture to performance art, video and installations. Their work explores sensory, emotional and material dimensions that cannot be fully translated into signs or systems of representation. Since 2002, they have examined the tenets via which economic actions and the theory of enterprise are described and represented, and how its production logic has infiltrated the most intimate aspects of life. This ranges from language and thought (as can be seen in their work Sesame Street Economics (2008)) to the diagrammatising of economic thought embodied in small sculptures in The Prophets (2013-2015), made using everyday materials that visually translate the economic graphs and formalise their desires, unveiled at the 2015 Istanbul Biennial and to the exploration of inequality in the distribution of wealth in the world population in their series Measures of Inequity (2016).

Their work has been showcased widely on the international stage and has featured in events such as the Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates, 2011); the Montreal Biennial (2014); La Filature, Scène nationale (Mulhouse, France, 2013-2014); the Istanbul Biennial (2015); and the Cuenca Biennial (2016). There have been solo shows of their work at art galleries and institutions including Monte Vista Projects (Los Angeles, 2012); Trinity Square Video (Toronto, Canada); VOX - Centre de l’image contemporaine (Montreal, Canada, 2014); the International Studio and Curatorial Program (New York, 2016); and the Jan Lombard Gallery (New York, 2017).