MARIE CLAUDE MARQUIS
Artist from Montreal with a multidisciplinary practice. Touching both graphic design and visual arts, her focus is mostly on re-appropriation of found objects by typographical interventions to give them new meaning. Giving objects a second life, prolong their existence and reduce environmental impact.
Your greatest inspirations or influences?
What I'm creating is always related to where my head (and my heart) is at the moment. Since most of my work is being alone in my studio and thinking a lot, I'm inspired by my relationships, what I'm feeling, what podcast I'm listening to, what's happening in my friends life, etc. Creating and writing stuff helps me to have an outside look on how I feel and I think this is often what we lack in order to understand ourselves.
Tell us a bit about your creative process? Work you are most proud of, things you are looking forward to this year?
When you are someone with a great need for novelty and variety, finding the balance between the new directions that inspires you and what the Galleries appreciate about your past work is sometimes difficult to find. But I think that with every show, I constantly achieve to push my boundaries and give something new to the viewer while keeping the main direction of my artistic practice. And I'm pretty proud of that.
I have a solo show currently presented at Robertson Arès Gallery in Montreal, so my next big show will be in 2022. But I have a lot of upcoming projects on the way this year; a big art installation combining interior design, an art residency, group shows, a mural and a board game. Like I said, I crave diversity in my projects! I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to work on so many different kinds of creative things.
How has this year changed your creativity or how you see the world changing moving forward?
Personally, it transformed my constant need to be in action and everywhere at the same time. My fomo is kinda gone! I think I have accepted to live more slowly and have realized that I need more time alone than I thought. It finally made me appreciate this lonely side in my work which brought me down before, so I see this part as positive and a relief in my creative process.
Who do you consider to be an icon of our time?
There are too many to name one. It's like asking me to pick one color :P
Do you think the art world needs to change, and if so how can it be improved.
Yes I do since everything needs to improve. So I would say; a more accessible world, less intimidating for the uninitiated, less elitist, with more mutual support, less competition, more women and cultural diversity and less pressure to produce fast (damn you social medias).
