When photographer and visual artist Maude Arsenault welcomes us to her Mile-Ex studio on a rainy Tuesday in May, she apologizes straight away: “It’s a bit of a mess, almost all my works are packed. ” The reason ? Winner of a prestigious prize, she has just returned from an artistic residency in Japan and is preparing to leave immediately for Los Angeles, in order to publish her second photo book.
The artist and mother of three teenagers is busy with the times. We could see his works recently at Projet Casa, at the Popop gallery and at the CDEx center of UQAM. She also won the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art, worth $58,000 over two years, last spring, and exhibited at the Plural fair for the occasion. Soon, no doubt, our great museums will snap up his work.
This aura of success that shines around Maude Arsenault could, in itself, justify that we wanted to talk to her, but it should be noted that it is above all her resolutely feminist approach, as well as her intimate treatment of photography. and textiles that initially interested us.
“The strength of gentleness”
A woman’s pubis whose clitoris is covered by an embossed gold leaf; a hand closing in the sheets of a bed; two mattresses that are connected to each other by a string… The artist’s images sometimes evoke the intimacy of the bedroom, sometimes the softness – the impression of softness being reinforced by the materiality of the support of his photos, often printed on textiles.
“An important part of my recent practice denounces the oppressions and aggressions committed against women. However, all my works evoke a certain sweetness. I think the idea of using the strength of gentleness as an act of resistance defines my practice,” she explains.
The strength of gentleness. It is also the name given by curator Mylène Lachance-Paquin to an exhibition that Maude Arsenault presented with Hannah Claus, in March 2022, at Projet Casa. And that’s the title we would have given to this article, if it hadn’t already been taken, so well does it describe his approach.
“When I was a child, I was very tomboy, she says. I had a lot of energy and got on everyone’s nerves. I was expelled from three primary schools and found myself boarding with the sisters. My mother used to say of me: “You shouldn’t take it with authority, but with gentleness.” »
From fashion to visual arts
We often talk about the propensity of artists to develop this kind of more impulsive, even explosive temperament, from childhood. But apart from her misbehavior in primary school, nothing predestined her for such a career.
“My parents weren’t artists at all. I even think that I had never been to the museum in my life, before I was forced to go there for school”, says the one who grew up in a modest family in Saint-Hubert, on the South Shore.
It was by chance meeting an ex-classmate who had become a photographer, during her studies in health sciences at CEGEP, that she “understood that this profession was possible” and that she was hooked. Passionate about textiles since her sewing lessons at boarding school, she then gradually turned to the world of fashion, where she worked as a photographer for more than twenty years.
“I had an exceptional career, I made a lot of money,” says the artist. His CV could, indeed, make many jealous. She signed portraits for She, vogue And Flair. She has worked in Paris, Australia and New York. Yet despite this, “I still had a feeling of emptiness,” recalls Maude Arsenault, who branched off into the visual arts around 2015.
Maternity and domesticity
Forced to rest for a few months, following a difficult pregnancy, she gradually lost her photography contracts. Discouraged by the precariousness of the job and by the way it was changing with the arrival of digital technology, the photographer wanted to become an artist again.
“The work stoppage made me think about how I could divert my practice to do something more militant, which would denounce the injustices suffered by women. For example, three or four years ago, I learned that former photographer colleagues of mine had to hide their pregnancy in order to continue working. It still horrifies me. »
Although little represented directly in her work, motherhood has also colored her work. “When my daughter became a teenager, I wondered a lot about what society imposes on young girls and I realized that there were big problems to denounce. »
So how, exactly? Unsurprisingly, Maude Arsenault always starts with photos. “I first collect images. I then give them [une seconde vie] by printing them on specific materials, or by reworking their frame. In addition to serving as a support for the images, the textile is also often integrated into the works, like a collage. “I try to reclaim craft methods that are traditionally more feminine, such as sewing and embroidery. »
out of the box
His questions about the limits (real and metaphorical) of the frame have also inspired his solo exhibition When the gaze collides, presented at the Popop gallery last winter. She offered reflections on the construction of identity through abstract images of reflections in shop windows and games of mirrors, among other things.
“Before arriving at this work, between two houses, she says, unpacking it in her studio, I photographed a sleeping bag that had been used to plug the broken window of a shop on Saint-Laurent Street. I then printed it on a silk and I integrated the idea of a crack that opens. »
“Cracks, creases and creases are ubiquitous in my work,” she adds, pointing to a model of her work Act 1. Theater of the intimate. “I wanted to represent the idea of going into a pubis, into a woman’s belly. »
Her questions about the representation of the female body in space even led to her master’s degree in visual arts at UQAM, which she has just completed. As this earned him the Bronfman scholarship this spring, we can say, without being mistaken, that his young career as an artist still has some great surprises in store for him.