Isabelle Hayeur

Isabelle Hayeur is known for her photographs and her experimental videos. She has also realized public art commissions, several site-specific installations and photography books. Her work is situated within a critical approach to the environment, urban development and to social conditions. She is particularly interested in the feelings of alienation, uprooting and disenchantment. Since the late 1990s, she has been probing the territories she goes through to understand how our contemporary civilizations take over and fashion their environments. She is concerned about the evolution of places and communities in the neoliberal sociopolitical context we currently live in. Her artistic approach examines the relations between nature and culture in a world where their (false) opposition is a dominant ideology that still structures our Western societies. When the utility principle comes to prevail over all other values and the economy becomes sovereign, everything gets viewed as a “resource” to strip or a site to occupy. Her works seek to show how we take possession of territories and beings so as to adapt them to our needs; this instrumental logic tends to invade all fields of human activity today.

Biography

Isabelle Hayeur’s work have been shown in major exhibitions, notably at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts (North Adams), Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Berlin), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Montreal), Canadian Cultural Centre (Paris), Tampa Museum of Art (Tampa), Bruce Silverstein Gallery (New York), Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art contemporain (Luxembourg), Today Art Museum (Beijing) and Les Rencontres internationales de la photographie à Arles.Her artworks can be found in numerous public and private collections, including those of the National Gallery of Canada, the Fonds national d’art contemporain in Paris, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton), the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Isabelle Hayeur was awarded The Hnatyshyn Foundation mid-career award in 2021, The Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography in 2019 and was a finalist for the Scotiabank Photography Award in 2015. She was artist in residence at Fonderie Darling in the Montreal Studios from 2006 to 2009.

Recent exhibitions

2023	Isabelle Hayeur : Desert Shores, Works from the permanent collection, exposition de groupe, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, CA
2022	Histoires d’eau, exposition individuelle, Musée du Bas St-Laurent, Rivière-du-Loup, CA
2020	(D)énoncer, solo show, Maison des arts de Laval, Laval ; Galerie d’art de l’Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke ; Plein Sud, Centre d'exposition en art actuel, Longueuil, CA
2018	Le camp de la rivière, exposition individuelle, Vaste et Vague, Carleton-sur-mer, CA