At Le Labo, we have a passion for experimentation. We deserve our name!

So this year, we wanted to revisit the traditional interview exercise for our new video capsule project, which we have entitled Bulles d’artistes. We opened the doors of our studio to 11 artists whose stories we want to tell in a video interview format that is offbeat, modern and intimate. With this first collection of portraits, we hope to offer a platform to francophone artists who rarely speak out in traditional media, and to make them known to the general public.

Through the lens of Le Labo 

Katia Café-Fébrissy

Director, writer, scriptwriter, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, multidisciplinary artist, Katia Café-Fébrissy is a poet of image and sound. Her talent is huge, because it is not limited to one form or another. Can we say that Katia Café-Fébrissy is a creator passionate about people, passionate about telling their stories? Certainly, since she loves stories, but especially those that represent reality. According to her, art allows her to remind society of what works and what could change. Art would also be a way to reconcile with oneself, thus giving a more than important place to the artist in a world that evolves at high speed, at a time when introspection is not always put on the agenda.

ARTIST WEBSITE

CREDITS: Director: Louis-Philippe Gallant, Running time: 00:01:32, Year of production: 2023, Distribution: Production Le Labo, Co-production Flavescent, Producer: Dyana Ouvrard, Camera: Jean Héguy, Sound recording: Matteo Peraccini, Editing: Sophie Dumesny

Julie Lassonde

A performance artist, Julie Lassonde uses her body as her main tool of expression. With her training in body mime, she has presented performances in several cities in Canada, the United States and even in Scotland. Her interests include gender, intimacy, but her greatest interest would certainly be social justice. Social justice is something she knows well, as she studied law, a profession she is passionate about, to which she has incorporated her art, in order to give a voice to those who do not have one.

ARTIST INFO

CREDITS: Director: Louis-Philippe Gallant, Running time: 00:01:29, Year of production: 2023, Distribution: Production Le Labo, Co-production Flavescent, Producer Dyana Ouvrard, Camera Jean Héguy, Sound recording: Matteo Peraccini, Editor: Sophie Dumesny

Martine Côté

Martine Côté captures images that do not leave one indifferent. She has developed and refined her photographic techniques with incredible precision, in addition to presenting her works in formats that invite the viewer to lose themselves in their imagination. Sometimes abstract, often snowy, the landscapes that are captured by this talented artist leave room for imagination, interpretation, and sometimes even nostalgia. Her photographs take us on a journey to almost magical places, where we want to get lost in the color, and let ourselves be guided by its light. His art asks the question of beauty.

ARTIST WEBSITE

CREDITS: Director: Louis-Philippe Gallant, Running time: 00:01:32, Year of production: 2023, Distribution: Production Le Labo, Co-production: Flavescent, Producer: Dyana Ouvrard, Camera: Jean Héguy, Sound recording: Matteo Peraccini, Editor: Sophie Dumesny

Ama Ouattara

Ama Ouattara's parents, who come from two different cultures, made sure that she was introduced to a wide variety of art forms from a young age. It is perhaps for these reasons that this artist has a strong creative instinct. As an emerging and committed artist, she has made it her mission to pay tribute to the influential people of Ottawa's francophone African-Canadian community with her camera, a way to immortalize faces that are often underrepresented. She has already won several awards and honors including being named to Canada International Black Women Excellence's 2019 list of 100 Influential Black Women to Watch in Canada.

ARTIST WEBSITE

CREDITS: Director: Louis-Philippe Gallant, Running time: 00:01:36, Year of production: 2023, Distribution: Production Le Labo, Co-production: Flavescent, Producer: Dyana Ouvrard, Camera: Jean Héguy, Sound: Matteo Peraccini, Editor: Sophie Dumesny

Saïda Ouchaou-Ozarowski

Saïda Ouchaou-Ozarowski is an artist director who tells stories that engage the public. Recently arrived from British Columbia where she spent over twenty years, and more specifically Vancouver, a multicultural city that is a reflection of her documentaries. She now lives in Toronto, where she continues to challenge our perspectives, giving voice to others who have important stories to share. Saïda, an artist of image, sound, idea and word.

ARTIST INFO

CREDITS: Director: Louis-Philippe Gallant, Running time: 00:02:13, Year of production: 2023, Distribution: Production Le Labo, Co-production: Flavescent, Producer: Dyana Ouvrard, Camera: Jean Héguy, Sound: Matteo Peraccini, Editor: Sophie Dumesny

Lise Beaudry

Lise Beaudry is an artist who uses photography as a tool as well as a material. Digging into the past, she collects these photos that we cherish so much. Sometimes she goes back to Northern Ontario, where she is originally from, perhaps to look for some harmony or nostalgia. The work of this Franco-Ontarian allows us to reflect on our environment that surrounds us, on the memories that make up our personal stories. But how do we bring these memories back to life in a digital world? By accepting the wear and tear of time, alteration and using pixels with repetition, ingenuity and a lot of patience to give these archival photos a new life.

ARTIST WEBSITE
ON VUCAVU

CREDITS: Director: Louis-Philippe Gallant, Running time: 00:02:14, Year of production: 2023, Distribution: Production Le Labo, Co-production: Flavescent, Producer: Dyana Ouvrard, Camera: Jean Héguy, Sound: Matteo Peraccini, Editor: Sophie Dumesny

Carolina Reis

When you work in the fashion industry, textiles are more than important, they are the foundation of everything. Yet, our relationship with fibers, fabrics, yarns, are perhaps taken for granted for a large majority, especially in our modern era where fast fashion encourages frenetic consumption. For Carolina Reis, a francophone visual artist, illustrator and curator based in T'karonto, they have become her materials of choice, where she explores them with love, care and great attention to detail. She interweaves and weaves together the virtual and the material, the imaginary and the tangible. Her works invite us to evolve.

ARTIST WEBSITE

CREDITS: Director: Louis-Philippe Gallant, Running time: 00:01:48, Year of production: 2023, Distribution: Production Le Labo, Co-production: Flavescent, Producer: Dyana Ouvrard, Camera: Jean Héguy, Sound: Matteo Peraccini, Editor: Sophie Dumesny

Jacques Descoteaux

Visual artist Jacques Descôteaux is a multi-talented artist. Watercolorist, painter, sculptor and video artist in his spare time, it is however the numbers that have occupied most of his professional life, since he was an accountant working in the automotive industry for over 25 years. A double eclectic life that forced him to use both sides of his brain, Jacque now devotes himself to his art, an art inspired by the North, which he has often explored.

ARTIST WEBSITE

CREDITS: Director: Louis-Philippe Gallant, Running time: 00:01:32, Year of production: 2023, Distribution: Production Le Labo, Co-production: Flavescent, Producer: Dyana Ouvrard, Camera: Jean Héguy, Sound: Matteo Peraccini, Editor: Sophie Dumesny

Samuel Choisy

It is with his camera in hand that Samuel Choisy creates images that go beyond understanding, and that leave room for interpretation and introspection. By sculpting light, he becomes a creator of emotion as all sorts of shapes and textures are imprinted on the sensors of his camera, as if a soul wanted to immortalize itself before his eyes. Movement everywhere, all the time. Still, photography was not his first dream since he was studying to become a painter, but perhaps he created a bridge between these mediums by developing his style, by appropriating the freedom to create.

ARTIST WEBSITE

CREDITS: Director: Louis-Philippe Gallant, Running time: 00:01:38, Year of production: 2023, Distribution: Production Le Labo, Co-production Flavescent, Producer: Dyana Ouvrard, Camera: Jean Héguy, Sound: Matteo Peraccini, Editor: Sophie Dumesny

Madi Piller

She has turned her memories into her art, a very personal interpretation, which navigates between the abstract and the exploratory. She works mostly with analog material, because the material is just as important as the idea. And ideas she has, just like her huge collection of film objects, a sign of her attachment to the 7th art, but of which she breaks the rules and conventions to create her own style. For Madi Piller, there are no limits, only opportunities, challenges, and results to explore.

ARTIST WEBSITE
ON VUCAVU

CREDITS: Director: Louis-Philippe Gallant, Running time: 00:01:41, Year of production: 2023, Distribution: Production Le Labo, Co-production: Flavescent, Producer: Dyana Ouvrard, Camera: Jean Héguy, Sound: Matteo Peraccini, Editor: Sophie Dumesny

Jean-Christophe Foolchand

A dream can become reality if you give it a soul, a direction, a movement. For Jean-Christophe Foolchand aka Le Super Jean, his dream has literally become a movement. He defines himself as a kinesthetic artist, a term representing the science of gestures, but he could also be described as an artist of the soul, who has kept his child's heart, and who allows us to find ours. If you see him on the streets of Toronto, you are likely to see a huge smile on your face, as he is often seen walking around with his largest work to date, a locomotive on wheels, propelled by a giant tricycle. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said that "All great people were once children, but few of them remember", it's a safe bet that Jean-Christophe Foolchand does.

ARTIST INFO

CREDITS: Director: Louis-Philippe Gallant, Running time: 00:01:10, Year of production: 2023, Distribution: Production Le Labo, Co-production: Flavescent, Producer Dyana Ouvrard, Camera: Jean Héguy, Sound: Matteo Peraccini, Editor: Sophie Dumesny

This program is presented by Le Labo.



Le Labo acknowledges the support of the following partners for helping make this programming possible.

       

   



      

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