SEPTEMBER 9 TO OCTOBER 9, 2022
With Fragments, retours, amas, Laïla Mestari proposes an investigation into the construction of identity. Rooted in the artist’s Maghrebian-Quebec family heritage, her works playfully recontextualize the objects, symbols and events that make up her daily universe to generate surreal images and places that reflect the complexity of a multilingual and heterogeneous identity. Specifically, she is interested in the tensions that emerge from the contradictions between the multiple cultures that shape us and how these tensions shape and distort us. Thus, by probing the fragmentary and mobile nature of her identity, she seeks to challenge the idea of a single-origin culture.
More » Animated by an ongoing dialogue between the visual and performing arts, Laïla Mestari’s practice explores the notion of hybridity of identity. Deriving from collage, her work takes the form of photographs, textile works, sculptures, installations, drawings and video performances that underline the surreal overlap between life and fiction, the mundane and the marvellous. By making universes in her own image, she playfully reshapes the discourse on identity. Born in Casablanca, Morocco, Laïla Mestari lives and works between Montreal and Chicago. Bachelor of visual arts, she is completing her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the recipient of several awards and scholarships for excellence such as Joan Livingstone Fibre and Material Studies Merit Scholarship (2021), Irene F. Whittome Prize in Studio Arts (2017), Sarah Leaney Award in Ceramics and Fibres and Ada Lovelace Award (2016). Her work has been presented in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Quebec, Canada, the United States, Sweden as well as in Spain. Her work is also part of the Collection Prêt d’œuvres d’art of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Art Volt Collection and many private collections. She’s part of the Artroduction project and her video works are distributed by Vidéographe. The artist wishes to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for its support to this project. Less »
Le Devoir – Olivier Du Ruisseau – Du «pur bonheur» à la Galerie 3
L’Aérospatial – CKRL 89,1 – Sevia Pellissier : Fragments, retours, amas de Laïla Mestari
