The id couple

In the Anadama project, Alexandre-Nicolas Soubiran and Dana Dal Bo delve deep into fairy tales, fashion and family dynamics

by SARAH MUSGRAVE

What would the Brothers Grimm make of Hansel in motorcycle boots with sticks of bread for arms? Or Little Red Riding Hood entwined in straps, giving the big bad wolf a whuppin? Given their penchant for the dark and demented, the German raconteurs would probably have appreciated the strange and often suggestive interpretations of their stories by emerging artists Alexandre-Nicolas Soubiran and Dana Dal Bo.

"We don't stick to the storyline," Soubiran says. "With Little Red Riding Hood, we just started wrapping each other up. It was very bondage, very S&M. It actually got aggressive, and we started wrestling."

The duo uses fairy tales and other codified imagery as springboards for series of elaborate photographic performances they call "positions." To dig into relationship dynamics, such as predator and prey, husband and wife or doctor and patient, they craft thematic props and costumes, assemble a team of make-up, photo and hair people (notably Dan Laflèche from Pure) then get into character. The camera captures the ensuing narratives.

For Dal Bo, the experience is more like two drag queens on a rampage than a sexy photo shoot. "I would hold back a lot more if it was a man who might be attracted to me," she muses. "It's a space where it's comfortable. I'm not concerned if I'm going to look beautiful or attractive to you," she says to Soubiran.

"But we always seem to end up naked!" he retorts.

Homoerotic or just plain erotic, it can be hard to tell, as characters slip between gay and het, male and female, child and adult. It's not always clear where one ends and the other begins.

Dual personalities are something Soubiran knows intimately. Not only is he a fraternal twin (his brother is the straight one), but he and Concordia classmate-turned-partner Dal Bo share the same birthday and year.

If the Anadama project is an exploration of the double and identity, it's also a showcase for Dal Bo's intensely detailed fibre creations: a quilt stitched from teabags, rubber bands crocheted into gloves, an apron woven from a shredded Soubiran painting, human hair fashioned into a unibrow. "It's important that every material I work with has a history," she notes. She finds no shortage of textures at the Salvation Army, where she does window displays with her boyfriend.

This summer, the partners are lending their artistic talents to fashion shoots, and preparing the first show of Anadama pieces, slated for October. Dal Bo, who won the Prix du centre des arts et des fibres du Quebec earlier this year, will also exhibit at Diagonale in the fall.

No doubt you'll be hearing more about Anadama soon, so what does it mean? "Actually it's a type of bread, made with molasses," Soubiran explains. "The story is there was this guy, his wife was cheating on him, he came home one night and she hadn't prepared dinner, so he took everything on the counter and made a bread with it. So it's Ana, damn her! It's a play on relationships and it's kind of a fairy tale itself - improbable but totally credible."

For more information on the work of Anadama, go to www.ansoubiran.com