Little by little, Pia Metni is leaving her minimalist mark on the Canadian artistic landscape. The young Quebecer of Lebanese origin, who is exhibiting her works at the Artist Project show in Toronto until April 14, has made her perpetual quest for balance a leitmotif to which she gives free rein in her studio in Plateau Mont-Royal. A rigorous exercise with high symbolic significance.
When we met, La Fontaine Park, opposite Pia Metni, was covered in fresh, immaculate snow. Only the lines of the trees and the pond disturb this vast white expanse. It is this soothing decor that the artist can observe in winter from the windows of his apartment on the top floor of an old house.
The threshold crossed is also white which sets the tone for the state of mind of the places where the artist lives and creates, thanks to a workshop with refined decor on the mezzanine. Everything here invites you to settle into the present moment and let yourself be won over by the virtues of silence. Like an elementary driving principle, tenuous but powerful. “Silence is part of my exploratory work. There is, in it, a weight which allows me to anchor it and ask myself existential questions. I need a neutral environment, like a big white canvas, to perceive what I have to say,” she confides.
In background
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
For his work with geometric shapes, the artist uses instruments associated with mathematics such as this large compass.
A self-taught artist, Pia Metni remained in the shadows until the most recent SOUK, the annual meeting of Montreal design enthusiasts, last December. Individuals, artisans, but also architects came to meet her and began a dialogue with her on the notions of balance and composition. “I still browse these exchanges,” she says with a bright look in her eyes.
The search for harmony, in his case, is mainly between the two sides of his personality, namely his femininity and his masculinity, very pronounced, in break with his years spent in modeling and in the theater, partly in New York and in Los Angeles. “I let myself be shaped for a long time to respond to what people expected of me, but also to fill the gap of my father who died in Lebanon when I was a child,” says the young woman who arrived in Montreal at the age of 5 thanks to her Quebecois mother who wanted to outline the contours of her future life with her two daughters.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
The lines accompany Pia at all times, who says she sees life in lines – she has also had this motif tattooed on her arms.
Of all her fault lines, Pia has chosen to make strength lines.
While she struggles to cope with the pace of work in the field of orthopedic surgery, at the age of 31, she escapes for eight months towards new horizons during a trip that will take her to the Himalayas. The idea of doing something else with his time germinated little by little. Motherhood and a pandemic break allow her to reconsider her priorities. “I asked myself what I wanted to pass on to my daughter. I got up at night full of rage. I pushed the dining room table. I knew that no matter what I did, I had to create,” she recalls.
In line
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PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Ink and oil painting on raw canvas with a maple frame
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PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
The play on shapes, here in clay, nourishes Pia’s inspiration.
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PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Pia holds out at arm’s length a variation of her Line Rebelliona black acrylic painting defined by spontaneous movement.
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PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
On one of Pia’s inspiration paintings, we find horseshoes brought back from a hike in Patagonia.
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It will naturally evolve towards a minimalist art made up of drawings, paintings and paper work. This sometimes almost mathematically rigorous approach allows him to go straight to the essence of things, regardless of the response his work receives.
Although I feel tiny, like dust in the universe, I nevertheless feel the importance of making my voice heard for women. It is often in the shadows that everything comes to fruition. Today we see what the pioneers have left to modern women.
Pia Metni
As in the cosmic immensity, things tend to repeat themselves in his work. This is the case with the relief lines which follow one another on sheets with a dense weft thanks to the embossing technique using a cardboard stencil similar to a grid. A ballet of precise gestures during which she always makes sure to forget a box as if to underline the singularity of the human species.
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PHOTO PROVIDED BY PIA METNI
The work Spare me your ideology was created using the paper embossing technique.
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PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Artwork Five lines in graphite on Arches paper. Sculpture in progress
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PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
This wool wall tapestry with graphic patterns was designed in collaboration with Mexican artisans during the artist’s residency in Oaxaca.
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It is often a strong emotion or an immaterial thing, like the wind or the light, that guides Pia’s hand. Over time, she saw the emergence in her of a “rebellion of the line”, a shocking formula for a creative obsession whose beginnings, like black painting with a more raw execution using a large spatula that she unrolls before our eyes, are impactful.
“The line will evolve organically over the next few years. I want to give myself the right to explore more of my masculine side with a more daring movement,” she notes, ordering her words with the same mastery as her features on the canvas.
Visit Pia Metni’s website