Artist statement
In the form of video projections, short films, photographs, artist books, and essays, my work explores ways of perceiving and understanding the living, such as the garden, the menagerie, and the natural history and art museum collection. My approach is contextual and draws in particular from experimental documentary practices. It is grounded primarily in observation—of living beings, but also of the cultural practices that stem from them and entwine with them—and in recording. My stance is one of non‑intervention: observing and recording allow me simply to be in the presence of other species, to grasp a minute part of their reality.
Through the works I create, I seek to come as close as possible to the subjects that occupy me, notably through study, interview, and documentary research. In doing so, I question certain epistemic models that, over time, have led to the invention of the concept of nature and that speak to our relationship with the world. Science is also part of these fields of inquiry, as it constitutes a practice that interprets reality and unfolds in close proximity to things, while seeking to extract laws that allow us to apprehend them through thought. Yet this knowing approach of science has its limits—limits that artistic practice makes it possible to explore, thanks to the sensitive dimension of art.
Biography
Geneviève Chevalier is an artist and a professor at the School of Art of Laval University in the city of Québec, Quebec, Canada. She holds a PhD in Art Theory and Practice from the Université du Québec à Montréal and an MFA from Concordia University. Her postdoctoral fellowship in museology at the Université du Québec en Outaouaus focused on artistic interventions in museum collections.
She was an artist in residence at the Reford Gardens, Grand-Métis, Canada, 2024; at AdMare, Magdalen Islands, Canada, 2023; the ACME Studio, London, England, 2022 and 2020; the ArtLab of the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, Canada, 2021-2022; Sporobole, Sherbrooke, Canada, 2018; the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland, 2017. Her work was presented in 2024 at the Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA), in Montréal and as part of the exhibition series Faux-plis par hypotheses at the Galerie de l’UQAM, Galerie l’œuvre de l’Autre at UQAC, Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University and Galerie UQO. She has presented her work in solo exhibitions or curatorial projects at Galerie UQO, in 2023; at the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, in 2022; Dazibao, Montréal, in 2021; the Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment, Saint-Edmond-de-Grantham, in 2019; the Musée régional de Rimouski and Optica, contemporary art centre, Montréal, in 2018; the Symposium international d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul in 2016; the Musée de Lachine, Montréal, in 2015; La chambre blanche, city of Québec, as part of Manif d’art Biennale 7th edition, in 2014 and at the Thames Art Gallery, Chatham, in 2014.
She has contributed to several publications, including Lieux et milieux des arts vivants. Performer l'institution, published in 2024 by Presses du réel, edited by A. Bénichou, and Réinventer la collection. L'art et le musée au temps de l'évènementiel, published in 2023 by Presses de l'Université du Québec, edited by M. Boucher, M. Fraser and J. Lamoureux. She is co-editor of the conference papers Critique de l'écoresponsabilité dans les pratiques artistiques et muséales, to be published in 2026 by Galerie UQO; in 2021, the thematic issue L'artiste muséologue of the journal Espace Art Actuel and, in 2018, a thematic issue on artistic interventions in museum collections for the journal Muséologies, les cahiers d'études supérieures. A monograph of her work, Towering, co-edited by Dazibao, the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop's University and Galerie UQO, was published in 2023.
In 2026, she will be the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec's artist-in-residence at the Cité internationale des arts, Paris.
She lives and works in the city of Québec.