Annie Charland Thibodeau
Les multiples récits à contenir
The Multiple Narratives to Contain
Annie Charland Thibodeau lives and works in Quebec City, where she trained in sculpture at the Maison des métiers d’art. She also holds a Master's degree in Performing Arts from the Iceland University of the Arts. Her work has been presented at several events and solo exhibitions in Quebec, notably at L’Œil de Poisson, Axenéo7, Circa art actuel, and the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke. Furthermore, her research is rooted in residency opportunities, both in Quebec (Centre Bang, La Chambre Blanche, Est-Nord-Est) and abroad (Ireland, Italy, Iceland, Slovenia).
The artist thanks the Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Quebec for their support of the project, as well as Jonathan Dubuc, Berthier Lessard, Marc-André Dubuc, and William Duchesne for their help and collaboration during the various iterations of the project.
Galerie B-312 is pleased to start out the year 2025 with Les multiples récits à contenir (The Multiple Narratives to Contain), by Annie Charland Thibodeau. In her artistic practice, the artist is interested in the notion of monumentality, which she initially developed through a material affinity with stone carving. The environment in which the monument is situated, its close relationship with stone, and their temporalities have become central research subjects for her.—A minimalist sculpture is placed at the center of the main gallery, adorned with triangular plates of polished black granite. The reflective materiality and the angle of inclination of the stone allow for the mirroring of the architectural details of the gallery as well as nearby people. Although this work has been presented in other forms, the sculptor has designed tiered structures surrounding it to adapt to the format of the actual space. The sculptural object is not an autonomous end for the artist; it is important for her to interact with the host spaces, a key parameter of her approach. In addition to recalling the base of monuments, this new configuration suggests a specific path for visitors and gives the pedestal's form the status of a work in itself.—In the small room, on a device echoing that of the large room, four boxes are placed, each containing petrographic slides. In Eskifjörður, in East Iceland, fragments from a now-exhausted calcite quarry have been offered to the artist. In the laboratory, the stone, glued onto a glass slide, is reduced to a thickness of 0.03 millimeters. Created with a scientific team, the slides, ready for mineralogical analysis, are presented here as witness objects, crystallized archives. By working with the material like a geologist, but for artistic purposes, Annie Charland Thibodeau suggests that the microscopic can outlast the monumental.—In the first work, the object supported by the pedestal seems to be missing, while in the second, the archive becomes more enduring than the mine that one might have thought eternal. From rock extraction to the permanence of the memorial sites that result, like markers of space, new narratives emerge. From the monumental to the infinitesimal, come and take the measure of these two proposals.
Annie Charland Thibodeau lives and works in Quebec City, where she trained in sculpture at the Maison des métiers d’art. She also holds a Master's degree in Performing Arts from the Iceland University of the Arts. Her work has been presented at several events and solo exhibitions in Quebec, notably at L’Œil de Poisson, Axenéo7, Circa art actuel, and the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke. Furthermore, her research is rooted in residency opportunities, both in Quebec (Centre Bang, La Chambre Blanche, Est-Nord-Est) and abroad (Ireland, Italy, Iceland, Slovenia).
The artist thanks the Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Quebec for their support of the project, as well as Jonathan Dubuc, Berthier Lessard, Marc-André Dubuc, and William Duchesne for their help and collaboration during the various iterations of the project.