Festival Art Souterrain
Exhibition place
Activities
Volarium, 2025
Kinetic installation: wood, paper, glue, iron wire, DC motors, electrical wiring, motion sensors
Eighteen robotic creatures made from recycled materials are suspended in space. Forming a constellation, the Volus come to life, flapping their wings and vibrating in response to the presence of the public. They all have personalities of their own: their cobbled appearance, the dimension of their wings, their at times clumsy cadence and their imperfections give each one a unique character, which makes them all the more endearing.
With their changing movements and the noises they produce, their flight unveils a delicate visual and sound choreography made of wrinkles, clicks and air movements.
If we think about the massive disappearance of the bird population or of our tendency to want to replace natural forms of life with artificial systems, the cloud of Volus becomes a simulacrum of the fragility of living things and the precariousness of our environments, the reflection of an era where everything threatens to collapse.
Biography
Native of the Haute-Côte-Nord, Sylvie Michaud lives and works in the Eastern Townships. As a multidisciplinary artist, she graduated in Visual Arts as well as in Arts and Technology from the University of Sherbrooke. Her practice revolves around installation, performance, sound and mechatronic devices, which she develops through a sensitive and integrative approach.
She is a recipient of a grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) as part of the territorial partnership agreement, as well as the REDA 2025 grant. Her installation Potentia was awarded at the collective exhibition Forces sensibles at the Galerie d’art Antoine-Sirois in 2022, before being presented at the Maison des arts et de la culture in Brompton. Her work has been presented in several residencies and group exhibitions in Estrie and elsewhere in Quebec.
Special thanks to : Bourse et résidence artistique REDAv