Her artwork teeters between the real and the dreamlike. All her subjects seem very real, very morose, and very mundane. One painting shows a collection of ordinary, dirty trash, and another is an elegant depiction of a teenager jumping over a fence. Yet Guimond’s hazy outlines and the colourful palette push the audience into a dreamlike trance. By titling such sombre pieces “Dream, Baby, Dream,” Guimond exhibits a sense of dark irony. That, or extremely low standards. After all, how can anyone aspire to such ordinary circumstances?

In retrospect, the dreams of many sculpted society into what it is today. The dreams of many resulted in ‘such ordinary circumstances.’ Titles in the collection such as It Girl and Mascarade seem glamorous individually but are inconsistent with the art itself. The It Girl is pretty with blonde hair and sparkly blue eyes, but is jeering in front of rebellious posters that tell her, in French, “You weren’t there to take the photo.” Her demeanour strips the ‘it’ right out of the ‘girl.’ Society’s value for this superficial perfection has ignored the true imperfection. What we see on the outside really is ‘it.’ But this surface impression might just be the most dreamlike aspect of our reality. Similarly, the sultry, romantic idea of masquerade in Guimond’s Mascarade is ridiculed with a plastic bag. Like many unfortunate animals in nature, a girl is being suffocated by a discarded plastic bag. In the background, a limp, dead plant surrounds her, seeming to also threaten her. In a world that dreams of the beauty of consumerism, we often forget the consequences of our desires. But Guimond seems to warn us they will eventually come back to haunt us, like the objects in the painting.

The dreaminess of Guimond’s art could represent a desperate hope that our ordinary lives are really just a dream and that reality is actually something much more fantastical. All we need to do is wake up. Loosely inspired by Montreal’s Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhood, a low-income area, Guimond’s collection faces the harshness of reality.

 “[You dream] deep dreams in the face of extreme situations, soft delinquencies to make yourself feel alive.” – Isabelle Guimond

“[You dream] deep dreams in the face of extreme situations, soft delinquencies to make yourself feel alive,” said Guimond in French in an interview with The Daily.
The artist explained that in difficult situations, a person’s dreams shine the brightest. Like the subjects of the collection, the extremities and absurdities of reality have forced people to see things in a different light, a more colourful light. To think outside the box is to dream of escaping the box. These dreams are the first steps toward improving these ‘ordinary circumstances,’ the hope of creating a better reality.

Behind Guimond’s dark humour lies a lighter, more hopeful message. She addresses the entrapment of reality with a cynical tone. Even if our reality were just a dream, we still couldn’t escape it; however, the exhibit bears a resemblance to the song from which it takes its name. Though known best through Bruce Springsteen’s bleak cover, the original version of “Dream, Baby, Dream,” by the band Suicide is more hopeful. Inspired by this, Guimond also repeatedly emphasizes the need to dream, and to dream better. If society dreams hard and well enough, then the nightmare of reality might finish.

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The exhibit features Sawada’s iconic piece, ID400 (referring to the 400 different sets of photos), which were taken during Sawada’s university days. She starts fresh and bare in an overblown passport photo titled “Skinhead,” then begins to take on 400 different identities. Her artistic process, transforming her into a different character each time, legitimizes these 1,600 photos of herself.

“How does she do that?”

“It’s her face shape for sure.”

Two admirers measured their faces against Sawada’s to see if they could echo the illusion. With only her face and neck to work with, Sawada transfers the exaggeratedly cute Japanese ‘kawaii’ style onto film. Despite the dignified black and white photos of the exhibit, there is a distinct lack of seriousness to the collection. Sawada’s characters are near cartoonish and clearly branded. Here is the goth. Here is the cat lady. Here is the cheerleader – it’s almost a Japanese cosplay version of The Breakfast Club. Each character tries her best to be taken seriously – after all, these are passport photos, and no smiling is allowed – but comes off as awkward and funny.

Like a member of any clique, each two-dimensional misfit is isolated and sticks to their own photo square without relating to any of the others. It’s hard to take anything away from any individual character; these are all stereotypes you have seen before. However, although viewers may not remember any single character in the exhibit, they are sure to remember Sawada’s face as reflected by her entire collection. The cheeky aspect of ID400 is that Sawada subtly infuses you with her work, so that only the amalgamation of forgettable faces stays in your memory.

Perhaps that is Sawada’s message: it is not about a single representation of an individual, but the entirety of their person. Everyone has endured the discomforting session of the passport photo. Frozen in one expression, there is little leeway left in communicating one’s individuality. Each photo may feature a different character, but they must all retain the same expression. Similarly, all 400 of Sawada’s personalities struggle to express themselves in the photos.

And what of Tomoko Sawada herself? While her 400 identities may individually fail to stand out, the artist proves to be quite good at her work. Just by changing the direction of her bangs, Sawada can embody a whole new person. Still, out of the 400 different identities, there remains only one name. Sawada the artist is present in each of her photos. The two admirers did not wonder about the characters, but about how Tomoko Sawada portrayed these characters.

Yet, out of all the characters the artist has created, we cannot pinpoint a specific photo to portray the one true Sawada. In reality, these 400 different identities are not individual characters, but really facets of Sawada. ID400 is a physical manifestation of the artist’s journey to self-discovery. Therefore, she combines the aim of portraiture – a realistic exploration of the self – with the aim of the selfie – a realistic exploration of the best personal angle.

ID400 seems to reflect the unspoken rule of carpe diem; we should not be confined within the square of a single photo. After all, no single image can give a complete portrayal of an individual. By repeatedly constraining herself to each of the characters she embodies, Sawada is recommending that we free ourselves from a limited photographic representation, because even a camera lens cannot sift through every part of who we are. After all, when asked what her inspiration was, Sawada herself replied, “I don’t know, really.”

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