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.

Marie-Claude Robillard - Démarche artistique

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