Chantal duPont

From February 19 to April 18, 2015
Opening on February 19, at 7 pm

Dazibao presents an exhibition marking the twenty-five-year video-making career of Chantal duPont. Eleven videos, made between 1990 and 2015, have been selected with a great deal of freedom and assembled according to their connecting ideas rather than chronologically. This screening highlights some of the many facets of the artist’s career.

Through her work as a teacher, at times even a mentor, Chantal duPont has been involved in every stage in the development of video art and latterly digital art in Montreal, with respect to both content and the emergence of networks for research and dissemination. She contributes to the work of numerous institutions, artist-run centres and research groups such as Vidéographe, the CIAM, Hexagram, La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, Studio XX and the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, to name just a few. A founding member of the Groupe de recherche en arts médiatiques, she heads up the inter-university research project “Nouvelles formes narratives et création audio-vidéo” and contributed to the first Quebec dictionary of media art, edited by Louise Poissant and published in 1996.

The question of territorial identity and its boundaries, in particular the boundaries between different artistic fields and between nature and culture and public and private, runs through duPont’s entire artistic output. Her videos take up family and cultural identity and the vulnerability of the body and of memory through self-representation, performance and writing. In the past few years she has developed a special interest in the various forms of narrative which can give rise to a movement between reality and fiction introduced by digital culture.

In order to add other voices to the mix and bring new ideas to our reading of duPont’s work while providing context for it, with the precious help of GIV (Anne Golden) and Vidéographe (Denis Vaillancourt) we have assembled a complementary program of work by Laetitia Bourget, Belinda Campbell, Bertrand R. Pitt, Victoria Stanton, Lisa Steele and Esther Valiquette.

Video program | From noon to 4 pm

Cartes et territoires, un parcours (2015) – 32 min.

Le marché de l’amour (1990) – 21 min.

Voir au bout des doigts (2004) – 6 min.

Pemesu (2007) – 10 min.

40 jours à rebours (2004) – 47 min.

Cartes et territoires, un parcours (2015) – 32 min.

Karma (2006) – 1 min. 32 sec.

M’vois-tu? (2007) – 7 min. 44 sec.

Voir au-delà (2008) – 1 min. 15 sec.

Trois tours et puis s’en vont (1992) – 9 min. 25 sec.

Visages (2013) – 2 min. 15 sec.

Du front tout le tour de la tête (2000) – 30 min.

Complementary program | At 4 pm

Belinda Campbell, Dis-moi donc ce qui regarde? (2006) – 4 min. 39 sec.

Lisa Steele, Birthday Suit with Scars and Defects (1974) – 13 min.

Bertrand R. Pitt, Rémanence (2005) – 10 min.

Laetitia Bourget, (...) (2001) – 9 min.

Victoria Stanton, Arrest (2012) – 2 min.

Esther Valiquette, Le récit d’A (1990) – 20 min.

Chantal duPont studied initially at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal before completing a Master’s Degree at Concordia University. She taught in the École des arts visuels et médiatiques of the Université du Québec à Montréal from 1985 to 2008. A multidisciplinary artist whose work has won awards at numerous video festivals in Belgium, Colombia, France and Portugal, her local awards include the 2001 Prix à la Création artistique of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for Du front tout le tour de la tête. In 2006, she won the Bell Canada Award in Video Art, awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts, for her exceptional contribution to video art. Her work over the past thirty years and more has also been the subject of solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad, including most recently at the Cultural centre of the Federal University of Goiás (Brazil, 2014), at Montreal’s International Digital Arts Biennial (2012), at OBORO (2012), at the Kunstpavillion (Innsbruck, Austria, 2009) and at Vtape (Toronto, 2007).

Laetitia Bourget holds a Master’s Degree in Visual Arts from the Université de Bordeaux (1998). Her partly-autobiographical work is multidisciplinary and includes video and performance, along with illustration and drawing. 

Belinda Campbell holds a Master’s Degree in Visual and Media Arts from UQÀM (2006). She is a multidisciplinary artist whose work encompasses video, performance, music, poetry and drawing. 

Bertrand R. Pitt holds a Master’s Degree in Visual Arts from UQAM (1996). Using a minimalist, interactive approach, his video and sound installations create unexpected relations between sounds and images and question our perceptual habits. 

Victoria Stanton holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts from Concordia University (1995). Performance is at the heart of this multidisciplinary artist’s explorations, whether in the form of direct actions or in video, film, photography, drawing or writing. 

Lisa Steele is a multiple award-winning artist and professor who is also the co-founder of Vtape, which she heads up with Kim Tomczak. Before founding the artistic duo Steele+Tomczak in the early 1980’s she created solo works which were milestones in the history of Canadian video.

The short filmmaker Esther Valiquette (1962-1994) also worked as an assistant camera operator and lighting engineer. In 1993, she won the award for best short film at the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois and a Genie for Le singe bleu. She died as a result of contracting AIDS.