Laurence Belzile

Centre national d'exposition, Jonquière (QC)

2025

This exhibition is inspired by the artist’s time in British Columbia, where the verticality of the landscape becomes a visual language. Through a series of abstract works, Laurence Belzile translates the sensory experience of a vast and contrasting territory, intertwining movement, light, and the density of forms. Her compositions, dominated by organic shapes, evoke sensations of elevation, descent, and suspension, recalling the monumental forests of Western Canada, the damp undergrowth, and arid lands. Using dry pastel, graphite, and oil paint, Belzile explores the subtle relationships between abstraction, territory, and sensitivity. Each canvas becomes a space of resonance between memory, material, and imagination. Grounded in a feminist approach, the exhibition reclaims emotion as a vector of thought and a driving force of creation, affirming the legitimacy of the intimate within the public sphere. In «Rencontre avec les Thuyas géants » (Encounter with the Giant Thujas), abstraction functions as a tool for translating lived emotions into visual rhythms. The work asserts the power of embodied experience and feeling as forms of knowledge.