“S’enforester ᓭᒪᓇᕐᑐᒦᑦᑐᖅ” is a residency and exhibition project that invites artists to develop a body of work rooted in a direct experience of the forest, viewed as a living, complex, and interdependent environment. Inspired by an old French verb meaning “to enter the forest,” the project uses this term to describe a process of immersion, mindfulness, and connection to the land. The Inuktitut word ᓭᒪᓇᕐᑐᒦᑦᑐᖅ (saimanartumiittuq), meanwhile, evokes a soothing place where one feels at balance. Together, these two terms open up a space for sensitive exploration of the connections between creation, territory, and experiences of life.
Artists are invited to ground their practice in a relationship with the territory, paying attention to the rhythms, forms of life, and dynamics that permeate it. The project offers a context conducive to slowing down, observing, and experimenting, where creation emerges from a direct and prolonged experience of the environment.
“S’enforester” welcomes artists from diverse territorial contexts, including artists from Nunavik, and brings together already rich and context-specific experiences of the territory. The encounter between these perspectives opens a space for dialogue where geographical, cultural, and sensory shifts help transform the ways we perceive, create, and inhabit our surroundings.
The project promotes interdisciplinary practices that focus on the concepts of trace, memory, and interdependence, as well as on the relationships between humans and non-humans. It offers a framework for research-creation in which the territory acts as an active partner, helping to shape artistic processes and forms.
ARTISTS:
AKINASI PARTRIDGE, MARJOLAINE BOURDUA, SARA A.TREMBLAY, VIDA SIMON, THOMAS WHITELEY
Co-curators : Véronique La Perrière M, Institut culturel Avataq et Atelier de l'île
In partnership with the AVATAQ CULTURAL INSTITUTE, MAC LAU (Laurentian Museum of Contemporary Art), the Sagamie Center, Atoll art actuel, the Val-David Val-Morin Regional Park, and KM42. Thanks to Chany Lagueux, graphic designer, for the visual.
With financial support from the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec and the municipality of Val-David
Thank you to the CALQ and the municipality of Val-David for their financial support
Residencies for Creation and Exploration
VIDA SIMON
20 to 26 JULY
Crédit photo: Derek Olive
The thunder rumbles and I look over at the specimens on the glass plates to see if they will blow away. We are in the realm of the fragile. I become aware of how everything – myself included – is shedding dust or skin or particles. Giants not noticing our traces.
During my first residency I worked outdoors with the microscope, drawing from collected specimens, and deciding not to label them, in favour of moving towards a more abstract and sensorial language. Meanwhile, upon visiting the Park I was taken aback by the erratic stones: how their scale surprisingly creates an atmosphere of secrecy and intimacy, forcing us to change course, meander. I look forward to continuing my exploration of micro/macro embodiment, moving between drawing, printmaking, performative gestures, and video.
À venir
AKINASI PARTRIDGE
12 AU 30 OCTOBRE
Drawing from her time studying mokuhanaga (woodblock printing) in Japan, from which the basis of Inuit printing emerged in Inuit Nunangat in 1950's and 60's, Akinasi Silaapik Partridge will explore and experiment with woodblock printing techniques to produce new works that speak to her Inuit and Kanien'kehá:ka cultures. Rooted in connection to the lands, names and creation stories of her respective cultures such as Sky Woman and Sedna, she will spend the time connecting to the plant and animal life in this environment to embody the Inuit values of pilimmaksarniq/pijariuqsarniq: development of skills through observation, mentoring, practice, and effort.
Short bio:
Akinasi Silaapik Partridge (she/her) is a 2-Spirit Inuk and Mohawk artist from Kuujjuaq, Nunavik and Kahnawake Mohawk territory.
She primarily works in illustration, often to depict scenes of daily life as a Queer urban Indigenous person, to traditional Inuit and Mohawk stories based on connections to land and nature through printmaking, beadwork and film. After learning how to do linocut printmaking at home, she took part in a woodblock printing residency in Japan in June 2024. Exploring the link between the Japanese printing tradition that provided the basis for many prolific Inuit print artists in the 1950’s and 60’s, she created her very first woodblock print. Featured in the spring 2025 issue of Inuit Art Quarterly’s artist profile, titled “Embrace”, this work is an interpretation of the Inuit sea goddess Nuliajuk - Sedna.
Her most recent practice has extended into comic creation, since returning to Japan to take an intensive course where she developed the foundational techniques to professionally make manga. She is currently working on her own 18-page one shot manga that will serve as her debut, exploring life as a Queer urban Inuk youth.
Through her work, she reflects her own lived experiences while hoping to create space for Queer, Global Indigenous peoples to connect, see themselves and feel strength in who they are and where they come from.
MARJOLAINE BOURDUA
13 to 25 JULY
Marjolaine Bourdua will conduct observations of living organisms in both the forest and the shared workshop. The perceptible traces of the workshop and the collaborative dynamics will be explored through the concepts of porosity, proximity, and interdependence. The dynamics of shared spaces, production cycles, organizational structure, and resource sharing are all elements that underpin and influence creation within a cooperative context. By paying attention to everyday objects, the paths bodies take, traces, tools, and ideas circulating within these spaces, the artist seeks to transpose these collaborative dynamics into a potential installation piece.
This period of immersion in nature will also provide an opportunity to experiment with video recordings (using a smartphone). Filmed slowly and sensorially at the scale of plants, these recordings will foster an intimate connection centered on the idea of “touching with the eyes.”
Echoing this practice of paying close attention to materials and gestures, the artist will also continue to experiment with basketry from a perspective of slowing down and regeneration rooted in sculpture.
photo credit : Paul Litherland
Bio:
Marjolaine Bourdua is a visual artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. For over fifteen years, she has been developing a practice rooted in sculpture and installation, in which gesture and processes of transmission take center stage and are conceived as a form of resistance. She holds a Master’s degree in visual arts from Villa Arson in France (DNSEP), as well as a Bachelor’s degree in visual and media arts from UQAM, where she received the Pierre-Luc d’Orsonnens scholarship. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Quebec, France, and Germany, notably at the PHI Foundation, the Joliette Art Museum, MAC LAU, the Optica Center, the Laval House of Arts, the Grantham Foundation for Art and the Environment, and the Clark Center, where she has been an active member since 2011.
SARA A.TREMBLAY
13 to 25 JULY
Sara A. Tremblay brings together a variety of plants, found and handmade objects, and printed works to create an outdoor installation that she hopes to inhabit, engage with, and adapt during her residency; she aims to surround herself with familiar objects in order to create a welcoming, domestic space in the open air. Much like her residency projects in Tunisia (2024) and Sweden (2011–2013), where she engaged with the sites through performances—many of which were documented in photographs—her presence here will manifest through an evolving, lived-in site-specific project, continuing an approach she has been pursuing for several years.
Chambre-jardin (for one), installation et performance
Crédit photo: Diogo Pereira
Bio:
A native of Les Éboulements, Sara A. Tremblay holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in photography from Concordia University. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Quebec, notably at Galerie B-312 (2023), at the MNBAQ as the winner of the 2023 MNBAQ Contemporary Art Prize, and at the Colby-Curtis Museum as part of a collaborative project with Anne-Marie Proulx (2023–2024), which will be presented at OPTICA in September 2026. She has participated in several artist residencies in Sweden, Tunisia, and Quebec, the most recent of which was at Est-Nord-Est in the spring of 2026.
VIDA SIMON
20 AU 26 JUILLET
26 AOÛT AU 1ER SEPTEMBRE
5 AU 13 OCTOBRE
Crédit photo: Jack Stanley
My project centres around a giant, handcrafted book that I will animate through continuous drawing. I see the book as a portable theatre, which can be adapted for various contexts, both inside and outside. This work continues my exploration of drawing as an embodied practice, but the book structure opens up new possibilities in terms of scale, physicality, narrative, and emergence/disappearance. As part of my field research for the book, I will gather plant specimens to draw with the aid of a microscope. I imagine this magnification process will deepen my engagement with “blind drawing,” observing the intricacies of the specimen, with heightened concentration. In another form of scale play, I am discovering that when I press or roll my body across the pages, I am performing the printmaking process: the charcoal imprints my skin and my garment, further expanding the layers of the palimpsest.
Bio:
Vida Simon combines various media to form site-responsive installations and performances. She has presented her work internationally in diverse contexts (galleries, hotel rooms, storefronts, theatres, rooftops…), and often reanimates former sites (an abandoned house, synagogue, horse stable, tiny church, sanatorium, office, restaurant…). An integral part of her practice is Carried Away, an ongoing collaboration with Jack Stanley, which has been presented in Canada, Italy, Senegal, Spain, Slovakia, India, and Colombia. Simon’s work foregrounds intimacy, fragility, improvisation, and ephemerality. In 2021 she published her first children’s book, L’univers bleu d’Anouka.
THOMAS WHITELEY
12 AU 30 OCTOBRE
- Au cours de cette résidence, j’aimerais me familiariser davantage avec le matériel d’un atelier d’impression, car je n’ai jusqu’à présent travaillé que dans mon appartement avec des ressources limitées. J’aimerais également expérimenter différentes techniques d’impression, comme la réalisation d’estampes multicolores plus élaborées (et trouver la bonne méthode pour le repérage de ces estampes à plusieurs couches), ainsi que la lithographie; mais j’aurais besoin qu’on me montre comment procéder et qu’on me conseille sur le matériel à me procurer. Je dispose déjà de certains matériaux pour les techniques que je maîtrise, mais j’aurais besoin de conseils sur ce qu’il faut me procurer pour la lithographie.
Brève biographie
- Thomas Whiteley est un graveur établi à Kuujjuaq, au Québec. Bien qu’il se soit toujours intéressé à l’art, ce n’est qu’en 2024 qu’il a commencé à se consacrer plus sérieusement à la gravure. Après avoir suivi une formation de trois semaines auprès de l’artiste professionnelle Nadine Bariteau à Kuujjuaq, il a acquis de nouveaux outils et techniques pour développer sa pratique artistique. Depuis lors, Whiteley a créé un grand nombre d’estampes. Ses œuvres ont été exposées dans de nombreuses galeries, telles que la Galerie Tivi (Kuujjuaq), La Guilde (Montréal) et la Campbell River Art Gallery (C.-B.), et font partie d’une collection institutionnelle. En 2025, il a également reçu une subvention du Conseil des arts du Canada. Son travail de pilote pour Air Inuit continue d’alimenter son inspiration artistique en lui offrant une perspective unique sur les paysages nordiques et la culture inuite. Aujourd’hui, Whiteley se spécialise dans la gravure sur bois et la linogravure. Il continue de se consacrer à la représentation de son mode de vie nordique, de la culture inuite moderne et de sa relation avec la terre et les animaux.