EMMANUELLE LÉONARD. Deployment

Curator: Louise Déry

Artist: Emmanuelle Léonard

Centre culturel canadien, Paris

June 9, 2023 - November 14, 2023

Opening: June 8, 2023, 6:00 pm

Deployment presents a recent body of work by Montréal-based artist Emmanuelle Léonard, initiated within an artist residency in Northern Canada, as part of the Canadian Forces Artists Program. In pursuing the photo and video work she has been undertaking for the past 15 years, based on a variety of visual archives and data surrounding different systems – judicial, administrative, military or religious –, Léonard continues to harbour an active interest in authoritative functions and the subversion mechanisms they generate.

With this exhibition, Léonard addresses a diverse set of realities: strategic military deployment in a region of the world where the national, political and economic stakes have been raised by climate change; young adults committed to the collective values of the army while remaining intent upon their own personal quest; the Inuit Rangers, without whose contribution one could not learn how to survive in such cold; the innocence of the soldiers’ awe before the grandeur of the northern landscape.