Jacynthe Carrier is a Canadian artist who recently finished a stay in New York at the Unlimited Residency. She is in many ways a performance artist by name, but she often vacillates between her roles of performer and producer. In her works she uses allegorical situations and metaphorical characters that weave participants within a deep archetypal network of encounters and disappearances. In her movie performances especially, there is a striking sense of situations repeating themselves over and over again—a disorienting solipsis of near-miss encounters and the vanishing hope for human connection.
In one of her more well-known performances, “Les Eux,” she creates a set and randomly selects performers who are given free reign to express themselves within. It is almost like this piece constructs a social research experiment, in which she investigates how rituals and collective impulses create masses out of individual organisms.
In the end, most participants leave her performances having participated in something almost therapeutic. Her participation as both the performer and director of these happenings represents, in many ways, the diminishing chances for humans to come together in very individualist societies – but she leaves us with reasons to be hopeful.
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Biography
Born in Lévis (Québec) Jacynthe Carrier lives and work in Quebec and Montreal. Through photography and video, her work is an exploration of mise en scène and performance in modern-day territory. She obtained her Master’s degree in fine arts at Concordia University. Her work has been presented in several solo and group show in Canada (Le Fresnoy Studio national, La nuit blanche de Paris, La Triennale Québécoise, La Manifestation d’art de Québec, Le musée Régionale de Rimouski, Le Centre de la photographie VU, La galerie de l’UQAM) Her videos have been screened in many programs internationally (Europe, Bresil, United States). In 2013 she was awarded the Pierre Ayot Prize for an emerging artist in Montreal and was longlisted, for the Quebe province, on the Canadian Sobey Award Prize. She is represented by Antoine Ertaskiran Gallery in Montreal.
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Jacynthe Carrier employs photography and video to examine the different relationships between the body and the environment, as well as the way we conceive and consume landscape. In her works, landscape, whether urban or rural, is an area that as been tamed, a territory of re-creation, a place of the still-possible. She carries out different types of interventions in which bodies and objects assemble in performative situations and/or mises en scène. She develops contemporary allegories, stories that bring together mythologies – both everyday and personal, popular and shared – in an attempt to re-appropriate a certain portion of the place.
Carrier obtained a BA in Visual and Media art from the Université du Québec à Montréal and the MFA in photography from Concordia University. Her works have been shown in several solo and group exhibition in the province Quebec Triennale, Manifestation Internationale d’art de Québec, Centre de la photographie Vu, Galerie de l’UQAM. Her videos have been included in a number of programs, most notably in Europe, Brazil and United Sates. In 2011 she was awarded the Prix à la création artistique by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. In 2012 she received the Pierre-Ayot Prize.
Education
09 – MFA (photography concentration), Concordia University.
04-07 Bachelor plastics and Media Arts, University of Quebec at Montreal.
Solo Shows
2012 (Upcoming), CASE, Montreal. 2009 Genre scenes, Espace Go Montreal.
2009 Genre scenes, study n ‘2, Caravanserai artist center, Rimouski, QC.
2009 Genre scenes, VU Centre dissemination and production of photography, Quebec.
Collective Shows
2012 Gone with the wind, Project Picnic, Deschambault.
2012 Pretend, Regional Museum Rimouski, curator Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre.
2011 The work ahead of us, Quebec Triennial 2011, Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal. 2011 Analogy of folds: a work landscape, Maison des Arts de Laval, Laval.
2011 LIVE / Afterlives, Galerie La Centrale, curator Lisa Vinebaum, Montreal.
2011 Instant Images, project Autocart Manif d’Art de Québec, curator Desgagnés Alexis, Quebec.
2010 Losing the North, curator Marie-Eve Beaupré, East North East Centre, St-Jean-Port-Joli.
2010 Mondo Art 2, Yellow Fish Art Galery, Montreal, QC.
2010 Visitors, Contemporary Photography 360 degrees, Joliette, QC.
2010 Nostalgia for the present, Circa Centre for Contemporary Art Exhibition, Montreal.
2010 Expansion, Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal.
2010 Art underground, Montreal.
2009 Pulses, Galerie Tzara, Quebec.
2008 You / You, Protest international art, Quebec.
2008 Teach me tonight, Galerie Lilian Rodriguez, Montreal.
2007 Suspensions, Art goes to the East, Montreal.
2007 Plot 4 – Ricochet, Space 4, Montreal.
2006 Parameter 06, Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal.
2006 Enter unnecessary , CDEX, Montreal.
Video Screenings
2011 In wandering, 14 th annual Antimatter Film Festival, Victoria, BC, Canada.
2011 In wandering, Festival Moments Digital Video and poetic Marseille, France
2011 In wandering, VAD International Video and Digital Arts Festival, Girona, Spain.
2011 In wandering, The 14 th Brooklyn Film Festival, Brooklyn, USA
2011 In wandering, Quebec Exchange Sao Paulo, SESC Pinheiros, Sao Paulo, Brazil
2011 In wandering, Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, Montreal.
2011 In wandering, VIDEO TRAVERSE, 14 th edition Proxime Art, Toulouse, France.
2011 In wandering, VIDEOFORMES, Protest International video art and digital culture Clermont-Ferrand, France.
Residency
2013 Residency Unlimited, Brooklyn, USA
2012 Video Strip, Quebec.
2010 Centre Sagamie, digital contemporary art, ALMA, Qc
2009 Video Strip, Quebec.
2008 Centre VU, Quebec. Publication
2011 The work ahead of us, Quebec Triennial 2011.
2011 Commisaires, Portefolio, Revue Esse n. 72.
2011 Fictions Filiations Barbara Garant Review the art Sabord n’89.
2010 The analog and digital in contemporary photography: a never ending story, Alexis Desgagnés, ETC n. 90 June 2010.
2009 Trouble-Fête, Portefolio, Esse n.67, September 2009.
2009 Portfolio 30 years, Spiral n. 228, fall 2009.
2007 The scene of the accident, Jennifer Pham, of conspiracy Exhibition Catalogue. Grant and Fellowship
2012 Pierre Ayot Prize
2012 Long list Quebec province, Sobey award
2012 CALQ
2011 Dick and Gretchen Evans Fellowship for Photography.
2011 CALQ
2011 Price artistic creation of the Council of Arts and Letters of Quebec (CALQ) for AT wandering at the 28 th Rendez-vous du Cinéma Québécois.
2009 Videre price Polling for emery artist, Quebec.
2009 Mildred Lande Lande and Margot Scholarship in Photography.
2008 CALQ