Douglas Breault (b.1990) works as an interdisciplinary artist, frequently overlapping elements from photography, painting, sculpture, and video. He received his MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2017, and he currently divides his time between Boston and Providence. His work has been included in exhibitions and screenings at various institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Bristol Art Museum, the Stone Gallery at Boston University, and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts.
Sleepwalking
I stage objects and images related to my late father to bring into question truth and transformation, using strategies of mimicry and fragmented self-portraiture. He died about eleven years ago by suicide, and he and I were never as close as I needed him to be. These inherited objects and appropriated photographs downloaded from the internet function as a tangible placeholder for his identity invented by me. The title of the series, Sleepwalking, is from the idea of occupying the sensation between being asleep and awake; reality and the uncanny. Sigmund Freud theorized people who were sleepwalkers were subconsciously attempting to return to the home where they slept as a child. These still life arrangements involve retreating to memories of my father as a child, testing time by documenting ephemeral elements like light projections from windows, my own shadow, and dying flowers. This series began to unfold as I realized my own impending role of a father, as my wife and I are expecting the birth of a boy this coming April of 2021.
To view more of Douglas’s work please visit their website.