Michelle LaSalle’s practice as an artist intersects with her life as a mother and as a human being, they feed and pollinate each other. Her work situates itself on the frontier between the familiar and intimate space of the house and that of the print studio, with its repetitive, meditative and embodied gestures. From it, she draws the metaphors that give birth to her work. The use of multiple installation devices invites the public to discover, look closer, touch, open, read and also move objects. She investigates bottom-drawer archives - ordinary and banal - as a tool to evoke time, its strange and spectacular softness. Time leaves a trace, fixated in a photographed moment, which then stretches into the repetitive gestures of studio work and materializes into her pieces: installations, books, objects, or casual performances. LaSalle is interested in the possible slowness of time - which, like her work, is rhythmic and repetitive, accumulated. One that can be seen and felt. Its presence becomes physical as if we could touch it. The paper is creased like a wrinkle, a mark that can be seen and touched, created through attrition - little by little.
Michelle LaSalle lives and works in Tio'tia:ke - Mooniyang - Montréal. Her practice is multidisciplinary, but she is primarily interested in printmaking and its deployment within a space. She holds an MFA in Print Media from Concordia University (2022) and a BFA in visual and media arts from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She is the recipient of the 2021 Denis-Charland bursary and of the 2014 Albert-Dumouchel Award.. She participated to and exhibited her work in several national and provincial artist residencies.
Her project Une buée de tous les jours was the subject of a duo exhibition at Arprim in Montreal and a solo exhibition at SNAP in Edmonton. She was also awarded the Relève UQTR scholarship for the 13th International Contemporary Print Biennial of Trois-Rivières.
In 2024, she will present a solo exhibition at the Presse-Papier distribution center in addition to participating in a creative residency at Atelier Circulaire.
