Visual arts exhibitions are back in force on the Maison du Conseil mezzanine! As part of our amazing city’s cultural reopening, we are delighted to kick off our 2022–2023 program with artist Marie-José Gustave.[1] Halfway between design and contemporary handcrafts, her creations explore a range of textures combining paper, textiles, weaving and cardboard.
Hailing from Guadeloupe, Marie-José Gustave was born in France and has lived in Québec since 1998. She earned a master’s degree in clothing production in France and has always been fascinated by fibre, and particularly paper for its simultaneous rigidity and flexibility that give it the ability to take on different forms and characters. She is a professional member of the Conseil des métiers d’art du Québec and the recipient of grants from both the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Canada Council for the Arts. She received the Coup de cœur de la diversité award in visual arts from the CAM in 2019. Her works are exhibited in Canada and around the world.
The exhibition takes place from June 9 to July 22, 2022 from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday at the Maison du Conseil des arts de Montréal at 1210 Sherbrooke Street East in Montréal. Both the exhibition and vernissage, which starts at 5:30 p.m. on June 14, 2022, are open to the general public (free admission).
About the exhibition
Marie-José Gustave’s art catches the eye as certainly as shadow follows light and light follows shadow. The poetic breath that emanates from her light and airy sculptures, with their earth-like tones, transforms the humble density of her raw materials—cardboard and paper thread—into a rich composition of everyday objects. They enter into a dialogue with the architecture of the surrounding space, with the Maison du Conseil mezzanine becoming home to a protean installation in which a variety of ancestral techniques generally associated with women’s work come together through the artist’s mastery of spinning, textile construction, weaving and basketry.
Gustave interweaves her Guadeloupian and Caribbean origins with concepts of cultural identity and hybridity and the values underpinning art as a common, universal language. The blend of plastic arts, design, furnishings and contemporary craft practices becomes a medium for her work and a reflection on the artistic act and the transmission of know-how. Gustave transposes the delicacy and fragility of paper—its organic, versatile and living character—and recycles it into strong images that evoke ocean swells, the Milky Way, makeshift shelter, the lacy quality of flora and nature in all its mobility. She invites us to look closely and to preserve its complex beauty.
[1] This event was originally scheduled for 2020.
