Au Chalet
Project_Magali Hubert-Huot and Audrée Demers-Roberge are collaborating for the first time on a project in the public space inspired by Magali Hubert-Huot’s Saint-Hilarion cottage, with its iconic folk-art decor. They don their homemade camouflage outfits and set about gradually building their cottage, a cherished retreat for Quebecers seeking to escape civilization and modern life. Chopping wood, stacking it, drawing, embroidering, molding, collecting rainwater, and building a fire. Somewhere between absurdity and self-sufficiency, the cottage serves as both a shelter and a creative space. Magali Hubert-Huot works with the Real Tree camo pattern to revisit the history of the coureur des bois and his contemporary: the hunter. She subverts the masculine symbolism of certain objects used by these figures, casting them in soft, fluorescent materials. Audrée Demers-Roberge draws with colored pencils and embroiders fragments of the landscape viewed up close, creating dense images that evoke camouflage’s primary function: visual distortion.
Bio_Audrée Demers-Roberge (Lévis) lives in Saint-Alban. She earned a Master of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Laval University, spending a year studying in Finland. She presented "À la rencontre du Gros Morne", a solo exhibition at the Parks Canada Visitor Centre in Rocky Harbor, Newfoundland. She has held various solo exhibitions, notably at L’Oeil de Poisson for the "Jardin d’hiver" at the Manif d’art de Québec. She has exhibited at the Foire Plural and Art Toronto with Galerie C.O.A., at Vu Photo, at Centre Inouï, at Engramme, at the Foire en art actuel de Québec, at Manif d’art 9, and at the Musée d'art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul. She has been an artist in residency at Est-Nord-Est, Vaste et vague, Creative Gros Morne in Newfoundland, Prima Ink in Norway, and Le Château – Association Diagn’Art in Senegal. Her work is included in the Desjardins Collection, the Méduse Collection, and the City of Lévis Art Collection.
Approach_Starting from an exploration of her own relationship to the world, and more specifically to natural environments, Audrée Demers-Roberge gradually transforms this relationship and proposes a holistic approach: an attempt to reconnect with natural organisms. Through the back-and-forth between closeness and distance from these organisms, movement and rhythm are created. It is not the apparent, objective form of nature or of the landscape that interests her, but rather what motivates its form and energizes it.
