Suzy Lake. Role Playing, Gender Playing
50/50 Series - Encounter #6

On November 9 at 6pm the Canadian Cultural Centre invites you to a virtual conversation with Canadian artist Suzy Lake. Join us for this conversation on our Facebook page and YouTube Channel (English with French subtitles).

Photographer, video artist, performer, and leading artist of the feminist avant-garde in the 1970s, Suzy Lake questions the codes of gender representation through a performative and theatrical practice of self-portraiture.

The exhibition On Stage, presented until December 23 at galerie mfc-michèle didier, Paris, is an opportunity for the Canadian Cultural Centre to revisit some of the historical works of one of the most important figures of contemporary art in Canada. An encounter that addresses crucial issues of the image of women, from the 1970s to today: codes of beauty, the challenges of aging, the domestic model and emancipation, but also the representation of trauma, doubt and confidence.

Born in Detroit and immigrated to Montreal in 1968, Suzy Lake currently lives in Toronto. Co-founder of the artist-run centres Vehicule Art Inc (Montreal, 1972) and Toronto Photographers Workshop (Toronto, 1978), she was among the first women artists in Canada to use performance, video and photography to explore issues of gender, body and identity.

Her works are in the collections of MoMA (NY), Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Albright Knox Gallery (Buffalo), National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Sammlung Verbund (Vienna), Cnap (Paris).

She has had three major retrospective exhibitions: in 1993 at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, in 2014 at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and in 2017 at The Image Centre of Toronto.

As part of its 50^th anniversary, the Canadian Cultural Centre has launched a new schedule of 50 successive virtual encounters with Canadian artists. In connection with an event, a project or to discuss current issues, our curator brings us into the world of these artists, during an interview filmed remotely, from the artist’s studio.

This is an original thirty-minute interview, each piece of which contributes to an “in progress” portrait of Canadian art in the specific context of the Canada-France relationship.