This text is part of the special section Culture Montérégie
On May 5 in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Culture Montérégie and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) rewarded the work of local artists. The opportunity to highlight the cultural vitality of the region.
The Montérégie is a breeding ground for artists, if we are to believe Anne-Marie Jean, president and general manager of the CALQ. “This region is particularly dynamic, and it includes many centers of creation and production of the arts,” she says.
Proof of this is, for example, this territorial partnership program, added to the regular CALQ programs, offered in partnership with the Longueuil agglomeration and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. A program that distributes $1.8 million over three years in support of artistic projects carried out in Montérégie with the help of regional partners and selected by a local jury. “It’s a tremendous economic, social and cultural catalyst,” summarizes Anne-Marie Jean.
The artist of the year
Each year, the Council awards prizes, in partnership with Culture Montérégie, to recognize the work of artists in each region of Quebec. This prize is accompanied by financial support of $10,000 for research, creation and dissemination of artistic works. “This puts the spotlight on a creator in each region of Quebec,” explains Anne-Marie Jean. Artists from all disciplines — literature, music, architecture, theatre, visual arts, dance, cinema, circus arts, etc. — are invited to apply to showcase the quality of their background and their contribution to the cultural dynamism of their region.
“A jury made up of multidisciplinary artists also evaluates their contribution to their disciplinary field,” she adds. A jury made up of peers is thus responsible for selecting the winner. More than an achievement, this CALQ award highlights the journey, even the artistic exploration. As it did last year by rewarding the writer Karoline Georges, whose work oscillates between writing and digital arts.
“The great freedom of this expression allows me to be in conjunction between literary and digital work”, expresses the one who says she is “looking for a new way to explore poetry”.
And the winner is…
This year, the CALQ highlights the originality and relevance of the artistic journey of Montérégie Guillaume Boudrias-Plouffe, a prolific visual artist who reinterprets popular culture with the installations and sculptures he incorporates into public places. “The idea of these works is to make known the little story that hides behind these places, explains the winner. This link is created through folklore, legends, historical figures or even oral tradition. »
Its approach is resolutely social, since the public is invited to make its own interpretation of the work and to share its references and its experience during these “performative actions”. “It anchors the work in the social fabric in which it is integrated,” he says. Like his exhibition I won’t have a death! born from a historical exploration of the Charlevoix region around the legendary character of Alexis le Trotteur. Or, again, its Climbing jarrigoine, the public work of art created for Le Rocher school in Saint-Amable, which explores the world of beanstalk in a municipality marked by traditional potato cultivation. Or, finally, his Vernacularium des LONGUEUILinstalled in Le Moyne Park, “a place that contains a whole collection of written and oral stories, and traces of people who lived here in another era”.
In addition to his universe, where popular history and everyday places intersect, it is the creative approach of this artist that surprises with its originality. Each artistic project is carried by all the members of the “Plouffe family”, as they call themselves, in reference to the universe of Roger Lemelin: Guillaume, the father, Émilie Levert, the mother, and their three children, Émeline, Léo and Zéphir. Everyone brings their own vision and contribution. “It’s a posture to challenge this idea that the artist is a solitary genius,” he says. I prefer the idea of an entity that works as a family. »
Weave one bond at a time
The most recent creation of the Plouffe family is a contribution to the audio work of Zipertatou (or Jean-Philippe Thibault) as part of the exhibition Spin over, spin under presented at the POP Museum in Trois-Rivières for the National Biennial of Contemporary Sculpture. Seven interviews were recorded on this occasion with the artisans of the Le fil d’Ariane workshop, which invites people living with an intellectual disability or an autism spectrum disorder to use art embroidery to develop their potential. creative.
“We modestly pay tribute to the sweetness and candor of the exchanges we had with them,” said Guillaume Boudrias-Plouffe, adding that the children participated in these interviews by asking their own questions. His work was hailed by the jury as a “wind of freshness in the visual arts world, which thwarts social codes”.