_Bio Eve Provost Chartrand is an interdisciplinary artist who holds a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from the Université du Québec à Montréal. She has a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Calgary and is presently a doctoral student in research and creation at Liverpool John Moores University. Her work has been shown in exhibitions and competitions in Canada, the United States, Japan and Europe.
_Approach By observing how her parents and elder sisters aged, ravaged by terrible degenerative diseases, Eve Provost Chartrand witnessed the way in which disabled and unsightly bodies can give rise to unease and provoke contempt, indifference or violence.
This has led Provost Chartrand to find ways to resist such discriminatory ways of looking and to transgress them by examining the negative and embodied aspects of ageism, which is manifested on the cognitive, affective and behavioural levels. Through her artistic practice, she explores the personal and internalised aspects of this phenomenon by means of empirical observations, family memories and her own history. As a way of providing embodied and inclusive representations, her work depicts divergent bodies (human and non-human), shown and celebrated for their unique nature and their generative attributes.
_Project During the symposium Eve Provost Chartrand, treating her “ageing self” like a curiosity cabinet, will create an installation made up of several elements, including a photomontage, a video and a sculpture. The relational and participative sculpture will be made organically, evolving out of comments by people who visit her studio. By offering her their general impressions of the installation and their opinions on the way in which she does or does not reflect their own ageing process, the people Provost Chartrand encounters will influence the fabrication of the work and thus its final form.
Photo credit: courtesy of the artist