S’enforester ᓭᒪᓇᕐᑐᒦᑦᑐᖅ est un projet de résidences et d’expositions qui invite les artistes à développer une recherche ancrée dans une expérience directe de la forêt, envisagée comme un milieu vivant, complexe et interdépendant. Inspiré d’un ancien verbe français signifiant « entrer dans la forêt », le projet mobilise ce terme pour désigner un processus d’immersion, d’attention et de relation au territoire. Le mot inuktitut ᓭᒪᓇᕐᑐᒦᑦᑐᖅ (saimanartumiittuq) évoque quant à lui un lieu apaisant, où l’on se sent en équilibre. Ensemble, ces deux termes ouvrent un espace de recherche sensible autour des liens entre création, territoire et expériences du vivant.
Les artistes sont invité·e·s à engager leur démarche dans une relation avec le territoire, en portant attention aux rythmes, aux formes de vie et aux dynamiques qui le traversent. Le projet propose un contexte propice au ralentissement, à l’observation et à l’expérimentation, où la création émerge d’une expérience directe et prolongée du milieu.
S’enforester accueille des artistes issu·e·s de différentes réalités territoriales, dont des artistes du Nunavik, et met en relation des expériences du territoire déjà riches et situées. La rencontre entre ces perspectives ouvre un espace de dialogue où les déplacements géographiques, culturels et sensibles participent à transformer les manières de percevoir, de créer et d’habiter.
Le projet encourage des pratiques interdisciplinaires attentives aux notions de trace, de mémoire et d’interdépendance, ainsi qu’aux relations entre humains et non-humains. Il propose un cadre de recherche-création où le territoire agit comme partenaire actif, contribuant à façonner les processus et les formes artistiques.
ARTISTES:
AKINASI PARTRIDGE, MARJOLAINE BOURDUA, SARA A.TREMBLAY, VIDA SIMON, THOMAS WHITELEY
Co-commissaires : Véronique La Perrière M, Institut culturel Avataq et Atelier de l'île
En partenariat avec l'INSTITUT CULTUREL AVATAQ, le MAC LAU (Musée d'art contemporaine des Laurentides), le Centre Sagamie, Atoll art actuel, le Parc régional Val-David Val-Morin et KM42. Merci à Chany Lagueux, graphiste, pour le visuel.
Avec le soutien financier du Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec et de la municipalité de Val-David
Merci au Calq et la municipalité de Val-David pour leur soutien financier
Residencies for Creation and Exploration
AKINASI PARTRIDGE
12 AU 30 OCTOBRE
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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
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