Isabelle Hayeur, born in 1969, is a lens-based artist known for her photographs and her experimental videos. She has obtained recognition in the contemporary art world both in Quebec and throughout Canada and abroad. Committed to the environmental cause since the 1990s, she observes and documents with a keen and critical eye the transformation of our ecosystem and the devastating impact of massive urbanization and industrialization on our land. Hayeur has transposed these compelling issues into images and words in a singular, on-target and tenacious manner. Her topics of investigation are the land, housing and water, images of which she manipulates digitally in various fashions in such a way as to raise doubts about the veracity of the landscapes depicted. The strategies she employs seek to make us think about the way in which we perceive and conceive our own surroundings. She is particularly interested in the feelings of alienation, uprooting and disenchantment.
In the section presented specifically at Plein sud, the photographs from the Underworlds series, combined with the video Adrift, paint a portrait of an ecological disaster and the deplorable consequences of the activities of massive industrialization on our oceans. Captured, among other things, under the murky waters of the Staten Island boat cemetery on the American east coast, the works of disturbing beauty do not hide the scars caused in particular by the drilling ships and oil tankers which navigate freely near the shores.
The other parts of the exhibition, presented at the Salle Alfred-Pellan of the Maison des arts de Laval and at the Galerie d’art Antoine-Sirois of the Université de Sherbrooke respectively take a critical look at urban territories and rural areas abandoned, and landscapes shaped by hydropower in Quebec.
Monography
Texts in French and English
360 pages — 359 reproductions
Hard cover — 12 ”x 9.5” (30.5 x 23.5 cm)
Production: Plein sud édition
Editors: Plein sud édition, Galerie d’art Antoine-Sirois at Université de Sherbrooke, and Salle Alfred-Pellan at the The Maison des arts de Laval
Price: $ 70 (CAD)
ISBN 978-2-922256-86-4
