Traces of our Spaces (2022)
Sarah Thibault and the high school students of Quebec City’s Vanier neighbourhood (Quebec City, Quebec)

This collective mural is the fruit of artist Sarah Thibault’s cultural mediation workshop with high school students in Quebec City’s Vanier neighbourhood. A monumental plinth has been adorned with domestic moldings and ornamental bas-reliefs that participating students made from impressions taken in their own homes. Arranged in symmetrical patterns and gilded, students’ highly personal fragments become elegant, precious motifs.
Heritage note: The architectural moldings, bas-relief ornaments and gilding in the collective work echo the neoclassical decorative elements of the local church, Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. Eighteenth-century art production in New France focused on creating sculptural ornamentation, and later on gilding, for places of worship.
This work was produced in collaboration with EXMURO arts publics.
Sarah Thibault embraces popular imagery and takes a satirical approach to the decorative arts that appropriates the visual culture of power. She has exhibited at artist-run centres throughout Quebec, and completed residencies including the Annexes du Château de Bourglinster, Luxembourg, and Studio Kura in Itoshima, Japan.

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