Enlightened Garden of the Night Immersive video installation by Suzanne Giroux

Enlightened Garden of the Night offers viewers an immersive experience, both exterior and interior. A work about transition, the living painting symbolizes the infinite dance of opposites – between night and day, darkness and light, water and fire.

The human soul is represented as a bather in quest of enlightenment, moved by the longing to rediscover her lost transparency with Nature. She emerges from the depths of the dark night seeking her Breath and taking shape in the waterlily pond into which she continually dissolves.

The video installation is visible from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. outside the Pierre Lassonde Pavilion.

Poetize the landscape

Suzanne Giroux has adopted the approach of a painter. She creates monumental tableaux vivants that she places on architectural structures by means of a video mechanism device. The tableaux vivants seek to poetize the landscape and influence the quality of life in the public arena. The mainspring of her approach is the creation of a contemplative pictorial experience that can engender well-being, relief, or joy.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Internationally renowned visual artist Suzanne Giroux is known for her video-paintings of live models inspired by the great art-historical portrayals of Venus and for her series Giverny le temps mauve. She is also famously responsible for discovering a human body in the Mona Lisa’s smile, once rotated by 90 degrees. This work was unveiled at the Foire internationale d’art contemporain de Paris, in 1993.

Giroux has presented numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, moCa (Museum of Contemporary Art) Cleveland, the 49th Parallel in New York, and the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale.

She holds a D.E.A. from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, an MA in art history from the Université de Montréal, a BFA from the University of Ottawa, and an MBA from Université Laval. She has taught at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Concordia University, and the University of Ottawa, and founded the visual arts department at Cégep Beauce-Appalaches. She lives and works in the Étang mauve ecological sanctuary in Beauce, Québec

This project was made possible thanks to the financial contribution of the Incubateur d'innovations muséales, powered by the Secrétariat à la Capitale-Nationale.

Credits

Suzanne Giroux, Jardin Lumière de la Nuit, 2021, Video installation, 13-min silent loop, silent, From the artist's collection.