Biography
Geneviève Chevalier is an artist and a professor at the School of Art of Laval University in the city of Québec, Quebec, Canada. She holds a PhD in Art Theory and Practice from the Université du Québec à Montréal (SSHRC 2010-2013) and an MFA from Concordia University. Her postdoctoral fellowship in museology (FRQSC 2014-2016) with the research group The Convulsive Collections (CIÉ/CO) focused on artistic interventions in museum collections.
G. Chevalier's work takes the form of video projections, films as well as photographic series. She focuses her attention on the field of natural history to better address the issue of biodiversity loss in an era of climate crisis (FRQSC 2020-2023). Through her works, the artist questions the conception of the living world inherited from modernity: a living world that is decontextualized, simplified and exploitable. She has thus set out to document certain modes of apprehension and knowledge, such as the natural history collection, the better to explore the possibilities of new uses that they offer, leading to a different vision of the world.
Her current work focuses on integrating more sensitive approaches to the living world into artistic, curatorial and museum practices.
She was an artist in residence at the Reford Gardens, Grand-Métis, Quebec, in 2024; at AdMare, on the Magdalen Islands, Quebec, in 2023; the ACME Studio in London, England, in 2022 and 2020; the ArtLab of the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec, in 2021-2022; Sporobole in Sherbrooke, in 2018; the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland, in 2017.
Her work was presented in 2024 at the Festival International du Film sur l’Art (FIFA), in Montreal; at the Galerie UQO, Gatineau, Quebec, in 2023; at the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, in 2022; Dazibao, Montreal, in 2021; the Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment, Saint-Edmond-de-Grantham, Quebec, in 2019; the Musée régional de Rimouski and Optica, contemporary art centre, Montreal, in 2018; the Symposium international d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul in 2016; the Musée de Lachine, Montreal, in 2015; La chambre blanche, city of Québec, as part of Manif d’art 7, in 2014 and at the Thames Art Gallery, Chatham, Ontario, in 2014.
She has contributed to several publications, including Lieux et milieux des arts vivants. Performer l'institution, to be published in 2023 by Presses du réel, edited by Anne Bénichou, and Réinventer la collection. L'art et le musée au temps de l'évènementiel, published in 2023 by Presses de l'Université du Québec, edited by Mélanie Boucher, Marie Fraser and Johanne Lamoureux. In 2021, she also co-edited with M. Boucher the thematic issue L'artiste muséologue of the journal Espace Art Actuel and, in 2018, a thematic issue on artistic interventions in museum collections for the journal Muséologies, les cahiers d'études supérieures. A monograph of her work, Geneviève Chevalier. Mirement/Towering, co-edited by Dazibao, the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop's University and Galerie UQO was published in 2023.
In 2024, her work will be presented as part of the project Faux-plis, curated by Louise Déry and Marie-Hélène Leblanc, at the Galerie UQAM, the Galerie UQO, the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University, the galerie l’oeuvre de l’autre at UQAC and the Reford Gardens.
She lives and works in the city of Quebec.