Biography
Sylvie Laurin was born in Quebec City in 1961, where she lives and works. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in visual arts, a deep background in administration and works full-time as a professional artist. Her artistic practice overlaps visual arts as well as arts and crafts. Her work assessment focuses on societal issues that have driven her for many years. Her creation of sculptures and jewelry aims to denounce, affirm, question and transmit a societal message as well as an environmental one. She entered the financial sector as a stock broker specializing in ethical investments and green technologies. She believed this path would allow her, with the values that drive her, to change things through action, by buying shares of companies that were ethically responsible. She realized after a few years that art would be a better suited eye-opener and communication channel and returned to her artistic practice. She found that culture can reach a wider audience quicker and that her artistic message could be more powerful, disturbing and satisfying.
Artistic approach
As an artist, I am inspired by the beauty of nature, sometimes damaged and saddened by unfortunate human intrusions that alter its beauty. This motivation is behind my artistic approach and constitutes an inexhaustible source of inspiration.
Through my engaged artistic proposals, I seek to create a tension, a reaction… a reflection. The primary intent of my work is to affirm, question and denounce. I am facing such challenges in every creation. I question the identity; I shake the perceptions to push for reflection. The supremacy of mankind that forgets its mortality; here is what drives me as an artist. Humans are still destroying, polluting, creating injustices, abusing resources, overexploiting again and again.
Once I found a theme I would like to develop for a new exhibition, my creative process begins, anchored mainly in experimentation and exploration in the workshop. Various transformations of materials, molding tests, heating, burning, fusion, destruction, juxtaposition of the materials until I’ve explored a plethora of combinations. The final choice of material used is made to fit the meaning of the specific artwork.
The reuse of wood, glass, furs, plants, bones, stones, metals, building materials and all other recycled materials from our overconsumption is the main component of my work. Through the chosen themes, working with forms, association of materials, colors, textures, I create artwork that questions the identity, the cultural universe and the perception of the observer while suggesting reflections and interpretations.
Fine words by finery and sculpture