Wiels | EN

Jannick Deslauriers (°1983, CA) currently resides and works in Montreal, Canada. Her sculptures and architectural spaces fuse steel, dust, and water with insulating materials such as plastic, silicone, and beeswax, delving into concepts of control, normalization, containment, and commemoration. Deslauriers' fascination lies in the interplay between the intimate and the collective, resulting in structures that often blur the line between reality and imagination, drawing inspiration from the care, restraint, or supportive apparatus found in institutional environments.

The spaces carefully crafted by Deslauriers inhabit an ambiguous realm. The layering and intertwining of references, materials, and manufacturing techniques form a perpetual cycle of decay, restoration, and transformation. Indeed, although the objects she builds are recognizable, their transparency and fragmentary state encourage us to fill in the missing part, to imagine what has dissolved or faded away by calling upon our memory. Between appearance and disappearance, temporality becomes ambiguous and the hollowed-out envelopes that appear to slump and meander in space, reveal a residue of dust and debris as though bearing or shielding their own degradation. The water trapped within these envelopes catalyzes the oxidation of the metal, unveiling surfaces corroded by rust. Thus, the objects gradually deteriorate, imbuing their existence with a temporal narrative. Deslauriers' work probes the vulnerability of materiality while capturing the transient allure of a slow erasure.


BIO

Deslauriers received a BFA from Concordia University in 2008 and an MFA in sculpture from the Yale School of Art (Connecticut) in 2022. She has received numerous awards and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Her work has been exhibited in many cultural venues in Quebec and Ontario, as well as in group exhibitions abroad. In 2023, she presented Imaginary Being at 1700 La Poste exhibition center, her first retrospective show. Her work has been featured in various publications and are included in museum collections in Quebec, the United States, and Spain. In 2023, she was selected by WORTHLESSSTUDIOS for their residency program in New York, and in 2024, she will participate in the Villa Lena Foundation artist residency program in Italy. Deslauriers is represented by Chiguer art contemporain.