Since the release of her experimental dream pop album L’eau et les rêves, N NAO has enjoyed genuine public and industry recognition for her ritualistic, spellbinding, mystical performances, even earning a place on the prestigious Polaris Prize Long List. The success behind this brilliant audiovisual work is due largely to her documentary research on freshwater, carried out during intimate escapades in nature following the recording.
Surrounded by musicians Charles Marsolais-Ricard, Samuel Gougoux and Simone Provencher, the experimental pop artist now presents her new EP, Miroir. The work is a collage of layered improvisations produced over three years, in collaboration with Sylvain Deschamps (Klô Pelgag, Flore Laurentienne). Miroir explores the depths of the psyche, revealing the games of chance, luck, and magic through raw, intuitive vocal, piano, and cello improvisations.
The title piece, “Miroir,” is accompanied by a video shot with a Super 8 camera, in which the artist seems to be seeking to transfigure the traces of an absence (“Une silhouette disparaît / Un ange au sol cherche le miroir”). Like the American-Cuban artist Ana Mendieta in her short film Moffitt Building Piece (1973), N NAO confronts us with questions of power and powerlessness in the face of forces greater than ourselves, while anchoring the body in nature. If Moffitt Building Piece is a disturbing statement on domestic violence (when a crime is committed and no one recognizes it as such, is it still a crime?), N NAO is also trying to open a portal to a secret of her subconscious that lies hidden between the lines of the three pieces.
The sun, sorcery, the mirror, the camera, fire … In this 20-minute visual and auditory hallucination, N NAO’s delicacy is remarkable and striking. This quiet inner strength promises great things to come for this artist, who will be flying to Paris and Berlin in May.
