L'homme à la valise
graphite on paper mylar, 18 x 12 inches, 2010

Interview of the artist:

DÉPART
Sophie Lanctôt

This recent series of drawings explore the suspension of time, the departure. Without identifying these sites of transit, the drawings offer fleeting moments of expectation, possible encounters, spaces that are like airports, « other spaces » *. I have always enjoyed going away. Airports represent a departure to elsewhere, both possible and impossible, to a space as empty as the white sheet of a page. The drawings exploit this moment of transition where we find ourselves suspended between two states. We can presume this is an airport or station by the symbolic representation of the suitcase and the interweaving travelers. Airports encapsulate many features of our current world. Displacement, surveillance, freedom, oppression, and barriers are intertwined with the representation of the figures, such as the strangers and watch-dogs who lapse into indifference or fear. Once again, I take on the role of observer, suspended on the representation of the real and the imaginary, through the space of a scene, a solitary space represented by means of a pencil and its traces.

*from the conference at Cercle d'études architecturales, March 14th 1967 « Of Other Spaces », Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits (1984)

Biography:
Sophie Lanctôt lives and works in Montreal. She has a Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Montreal, Toronto and Palma de Mallona in Spain. Recent exhibitions in Montreal include Mémoire d'ateliers at the galerie d'art d'Outremont in 2008 and Domiciles conjugués at the Maison de la culture Côte-des-neiges in 2006. In the past 14 years, she has also realized many public works with the politique d'intégration des arts à l'architecture et à l'environnement des bâtiments et des sites gouvernementaux et publics of Quebec. Lanctôt has been awarded grants from the Canada Art Council and from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.