Chantal duPont

A touring exhibition presented by the Conseil des arts de Montréal en tournée, created and produced by Dazibao.
 

Selected with a great deal of freedom and assembled according to their connecting ideas, rather than chronologically, the 11 video works by Chantal duPont brought together here highlight some of the many facets of her artistic practice spanning more than 20 years.

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.

 

Tour

15.09 — 21.10 2016
Maison de la culture Ahuntsic-Cartierville

23.02 — 26.03 2017
Maison de la culture Maisonneuve

30.03 — 08.05 2017
Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges


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, including 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 as well as the 2006 Bell Canada Award in Video Art, awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts, for her exceptional contribution to video art. 

 
 
This project is supported by the Conseil des arts de Montréal. Dazibao thanks the artist, GIV and Vidéographe for their generous collaboration.