I am fascinated by the others, those who make up the background of my everyday life. That is why I rely on recording mediums for my practice: photography, video and sound allow me to get a hold on the people who surround me, and give them a more defined form. Through the use of documentary-inspired techniques (absence of emotion and frontal framing of my subjects) I wish to capture and record traces of lives. To provoke encounters, I put up ads in newspapers, conduct phone surveys and go to various public spaces where I can meet random people, in order to collect testimonies first-hand.

My work uses the other, the individual's presence in relation with the collective group he or she composes, accumulation and the fictional encounter between the subjects and the viewers of my piece, hence blurring the line between being and being art. In this way, I document, reconstruct and record the present, these "traces of lives", to create human interactions. 

Biography

Born in Saguenay, Catherine Tremblay has lived and worked in Montreal since 2004. She is currently pursuing her master's degree in Visual and Media Arts at Université du Québec à Montreal after having completed a BFA with a major in photography at Concordia University. In 2005, Tremblay completed a one year residency at l’École Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Nancy and participated in a research and creation internship at the Studio national des arts contemporain Le Fresnoy in 2009. Her work has been exhibited in Switzerland, Africa and around the province of Quebec. She recently received three merit scholarships granted by Université du Québec à Montréal.  

Contact: cathtrem@hotmail.com
Website: www.catherinetremblay.com