_Bio Alphiya Joncas was born rooted in the heart of the vast Magdalen Islands. Documenting impermanence and writing new landscapes, her practice fills the interstices between the mediums of photography, sculpture and writing. Her projects have found resonance in the exhibition spaces of VU (Quebec City, 2017), Espace )( Parenthèse (Quebec City, 2019) and the Monique-Corriveau library as part of Manif d'art 9 (Quebec City, 2019). She has also invested the space of the book by working in partnership with artist and author Vickie Grondin, resulting in the poetry collection Il fait bleu (OMRI, 2021). In 2023, she was awarded the Prix du CALQ - Artiste de l'année aux Îles-de-la-Madeleine
_Approach As a multidisciplinary artist, Alphiya Joncas is involved in a conversation with the land. Her work, which crosses the practices of photography, sculpture and writing, is activated over the long term and cultivates a sensitive discourse on the sense of being at home. Her gestures seek to encounter the island environment of the Magdalen Islands, which she inhabits, loves and identifies as an anchorage. Joncas adopts a drifting posture as she walks through the island's diverse, buoyant ecosystems. Her projects evoke places that straddle the boundary between the familiar and the unknown: they tell the story of an attachment to all those habitable zones that sooner or later decide to embrace us, to adopt us. In this way, she oscillates between fullness and emptiness, bringing together bits and pieces of islands to write new landscapes with flourishing imaginations. The Magdalen Islands are a home - and for Joncas, they become inexhaustible subjects for tracing out cohabitation.
_Project During the course of the Symposium, Alphiya Joncas is keen to explore and discover those fragments of landscape to which we pay less attention. She intends her visits to Baie-Saint-Paul's landscapes to begin with encounters, so that through discussions, she can paint a portrait of this territory through the eyes of those who live with it on a daily basis. The time spent with the public will become a space where, through contact with people, she will determine the places she later visits in her spare time. Alphiya Joncas intends to produce a series of photos that reflect the relationship she will develop with the Charlevoix landscape over the course of the Symposium. Following her outings, she will take advantage of her studio time to continue working with her images as they become matter. She will create prints on paper and textiles, which she can then further transform.
