Biography

Marie-Claude Robillard is native of Sainte-Anne-des-Monts and currently lives and works in Montreal. She obtained a Bachelor’s degree in visual and media arts, and a degree in fine arts from UQÀM. Since 2011, her works have been presented in solo exhibitions in various exhibition centers and galleries, including the Galerie Éric Devlin and the Maison de la culture Marcel-Robidas and le Centre national d’exposition. She has participated in several group exhibitions, notably during the Gallery Weekend Montreal events and at the Voix-Visuelle artist-run center in Ottawa. Her works have also been displayed at the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides as well as the Montreal Contemporary Art Fair. They are also part of numerous private and corporate collections.
I try to reveal the inaudible by silencing all the codes of language
Marie-Claude Robillard
Artist statement
I create paintings on wood and monotypes on paper by working with encaustic paint, an ancestral process that uses beeswax. This medium allows me to make a palimpsest by multiplying the layers of wax and text. I try to reveal the inaudible by silencing all the codes of language; by blurring the signs, in order to transform the written markings into an artwork, in the memory of the invisible.
Different branches in the humanities have studied silence; philosophy, psychology, sociology and psychoanalysis have all analysed, segmented and qualified it. Over the span of several decades, these researchers and theorists have proven that silence is plural. The consideration of this plurality is at the core of my artistic practice. Among other things, silence can be gentleness, calmness, pondering, interiority, daydreaming. Conversely its expression is rather brutal; it is tension, malaise, rupture, threat, abandonment, death. It sets the rhythm, creating a space that makes language and writing understandable. I explore the complexity of silence and not its idealization, which represents a fantasy free from noise and disturbance.
In my artistic practice, I use writing as a vector since it is an act of silence and it remains silent as long as it is not read or transmitted. In order to make the different types of silence visible, I use several strategies of disintegrating and burying the language. Thus, I make use of destruction, self-effacement, white writing, the reappearance of erased signs, rewriting, deletions, superposition, I omit punctuation and sometimes even the spaces between words, probing in this way the overflow, the unintelligible which becomes empty in the same way as an overabundance of words which is lost and transformed into the inaudible. I execute the illegible in order to create a new space using references that we know, but which become unavailable as an idea of non-communicability. Although the text is thoughtful and sensible, it is sublimated by this process. This refusal to let my thoughts and questions be accessible is also an opposition to take part in this abusive self-disclosure that has become possible on various social media. This white writing, freed from all servitude to language, makes room for interiority.
During the creation of a work, a long and tedious ritual is established, a kind of ode to slowness. As the layers and withdrawals multiply, a scrambling is created, referring to the movement of thought that is continuously broken and simultaneously modified. I thus investigate the thought process and the complexity of consciousness. I inscribe with encaustic to slow down the flow of ideas, leaving a trace of this process, of what once was but is no longer.

CV
Education
2011
Bachelor’s degree in Visual arts, Université du Québec à Montréal
2007
Certificate in fine arts, Université du Québec à Montréal
Solo exhibitions (selected)
2027
Paradoxes, Galerie Karsh-Masson, Ottawa, Ontario
2026
Title to be announced, Arprim, Montréal, Québec
2025
Polyphonie du silence, Centre national d’exposition, Jonquière, Québec
2024
Tant que je pourrai noircir, Maison de la culture Marcel-Robidas, Longueuil, Québec
2023
Tant que je pourrai noircir, Maison des arts et de la culture de Brompton, Sherbrooke, Québec
2019-2020
Bruissement, Centre Elgar, Réseau accès culture Montréal, Montréal, Québec
2019
Tracés, Galerie Éric Devlin, Montréal, Québec
2016
Bruit Blanc, Centre culturelle Pauline Julien, Trois-Rivières, Québec
Group exhibitions (selected)
2023
Blanc/nuage Blanc/oubli, Galerie Yves Louis-Seize, St-Gabriel, Québec
2022
Galeries Weekend Montréal, Galerie Éric Devlin, Montréal, Québec
2021
Du livre objet à l’objet d’art, Le Livart, Montréal, Québec
2016
Livres et autres mots d’artistes, Galerie Éric Devlin, Montréal, Québec
2015
Entre-nous, Centre d’artiste Voix-visuelle, Ottawa, Ontario
2011
Passage à découvert, Galerie de l’UQÀM, Montréal, Québec
2011
Prologue, Galerie Onze, Cégep du Vieux-Montréal, Montréal, Québec
2009
Paramètres 2009, Galerie de l’UQÀM, Montréal, Québec
Events
2026
Pour l’art fundraising exhibition, B-312 Gallery, Montreal, Quebec
2025
Moi-m’aime, auction, Centre d’apprentissage parallèle, Montreal, Quebec
2024
Pour l’art, fundraising exhibition, B-312 Gallery, Montreal, Quebec
2022
Papier, Contemporary Art Fair, Montreal, Quebec
2022
Auction, Parle-moi d’amour, Les impatients, Montréal, Québec
2021
Papier, Contemporary Art Fair, Montreal, Quebec
2020
Papier, Contemporary Art Fair, Montreal, Quebec
2019
Papier, Contemporary Art Fair, Montreal, Quebec
2017
Auction, Parle-moi d’amour, Les impatients, Montréal, Québec
2016
Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides (MAC LAU), Auction, (catalog), St-Jérôme, Quebec
Grants
2026
Development Grant, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
2024
Development Grant, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
2022
Development Grant, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
2019
Development Grant, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
Involvements in the art community
2025-
Magasin, selection committee, Arprim artists-run center
2022-
Member of Galerie B-312 artists-run center
2022-
Member of Arprim artists-run center
2012-
Member of RAAV
2012-2013
Member of Articule artists-run center
2012
Selection commitee for « Projet vitrine » at Articule artists-run center
Collections
City of Longueuil collection
Caisse Populaire d’Hochelaga-Maisonneuve
L’Artothèque collection
Private collections