Biography

Catherine Boisvenue Ménard is an interdisciplinary visual artist. She holds a master’s degree in fine arts, painting and drawing, from Concordia University and a bachelor’s degree in visual and media art from the Université du Québec à Montréal. She has exhibited her work in over twenty solo and collective exhibitions : Brazil, Germany, the United States and Canada/Québec. Since 2016, she has participated in various Artist-in-residence programs, including at the Frauenmuseum in Bonn (Germany) and at Despina in Rio de Janeiro. Recipient of several grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts, she has also received the first prize from the jury of the Contemporary Art Fair of Saint-Lambert, as well as recognition from the Tom Hupkins Award and the Harriette and Abe Gold Entrance Bursary from Concordia University.

Catherine Boisvenue Ménard’s work gives rise to intriguing dialogues between performative arts, installation, sculpture, painting and digital arts. Her process leads to reflections on the corporeal imagination, aspiring to celebrate the body as a potential ground for exchange and transgression. The artist questions the body’s abilities to capture the imperceptible, to engage in a relationship with alterity – that is, with the other, as well as with natural and surrounding elements – to regenerate and transform itself. Like a protest against the body’s contemporary relationship with the world, Catherine Boisvenue Ménard’s large-scale projects offer an immersion in a creative and vigorous universe, reviving our intrinsic connection to the forces of life. They become a means of celebrating the body, but also of freeing ourselves from a reflex of desensitization and distancing from the world around us.

Corps Équivoques (2023)

Corps-équivoques originated in Catherine Boisvenue Ménard’s studio, from both technical and performative explorations. Imposing sculptures reminiscent of seashells are crafted through molding processes, using materials such as papier-mâché, plaster, epoxy and, finally, paint. A pair of dancers then perform with the sculptures, engaging in a performative exploration of a metamorphic process in which their bodies navigate toward new rhythms. They allow themselves to be engulfed by the objects, transforming into fantastical creatures belonging to the fertile imagination of the vast oceans. The artist presents video recordings of these performances, sometimes digitally altered, strategically placed in the space to correspond with the sculptures.