Biography
Cécile Martin is a photographer, videographer, web and public artist, master architect and curator of media arts and architecture based in Montreal (Canada). Since 2000, her practice has led her to work in Europe, North and South America, Australasia and Africa. She exhibits her artwork, writes articles, and teaches at the School of Design of the Université du Québec in Montreal. Martin has acted as a member of dozens of juries, committees and as lecturer.
As general and artistic director of the organization Champ Libre, Cecile Martin has realized sixteen media arts site specific events, in Montreal and worldwide, in public spaces or abandoned heritage buildings. She has then commissioned collaborative interventions between media artists and architects. She is the 2009 recipient of the RAIC Foundation (Royal Architectural Institute of Canada) Scholarship.
Statement
The cross contamination between my practices in art and architecture naturally leads me to question the reciprocity between these disciplines. My interest lies in the linking of views, tools and knowledge of both art and architecture through the creative practices and expertise of each of these disciplines.
Phenomenological research on the perception that the human body has of its environment is the foundation of my practice. I bear a special interest in the proportion, scale and contrast of depth specific to a given space. I integrate and transform through my creative process different aspects of any environment, always manipulating these as totalizing qualities.
Captivated by the invisible characteristics of space, I tend to create an experiment in which the eye and body wander. Each of my works is a construction of new spaces of perception, which take into account at any given time the reciprocity between environments, bodies and objects therein. Through the use of glass, mirrors and their effects in my pieces, the viewer is trapped between the work and reflections that occur within.