--- title: Laetitia Matrat description: "Multidisciplinary artist, my work is expressed through painting and collage on a variety of supports" url: "https://www.artsume.com/a/laetitia-matrat" type: artist createdAt: 2026-03-23 updatedAt: 2026-05-20 disciplines: - Painting - Watercolor - Collage - Sculpture - Photography - Performance art location: "Montréal, QC, Canada" website: "https://laetitiamatrat.my.canva.site/" --- # Laetitia Matrat *Multidisciplinary artist, my work is expressed through painting and collage on a variety of supports | Painting, Watercolor, Collage, Sculpture, Photography, Performance art | Based in Montréal, QC, Canada* ## Artist Statement My work explores renewal as a slow process shaped by reprises, shifts, and reinterpretations rather than clear breaks. Through collage and the assembly of archival images, I examine how landscapes, narratives, and identities evolve over time according to the perspectives through which they are seen. My projects draw on images taken from old and often abandoned publications—books and documents once destined for recycling or oblivion. These images carry the imagination of another era, reflecting historical ways of seeing the land shaped by ideology and cultural context. By cutting, fragmenting, and recomposing them, I do not attempt to restore the past but to give these materials a second life and create new narratives rooted in the present. The landscapes that emerge from these assemblages become transitional spaces composed of fragments from the world. They form composite territories that cannot be precisely located. Within them appear human figures from different times and origins: black-and-white characters from the past coexist with colored bodies suggesting arrival, movement, and the perspective of a new gaze. These presences share the same transforming space rather than opposing one another. Renewal here does not mean erasing earlier narratives but composing with them. Collage becomes a gesture of sensitive repair that gathers scattered fragments and reveals the seams, adjustments, and traces of transformation. Themes such as The Beauty of Disorder emerge from this process, exploring the forms and stories that arise from instability, chaos, and change. Other projects, such as Récit sous influence and Inhabiting the Image, reflect on the afterlife of images—documents once destined to disappear but capable of generating new meanings. Removed from their original context, they become spaces for memory, imagination, and shared storytelling, inviting viewers to slow down and reconsider their relationship with images in our contemporary visual landscape. ## Biography Holder of a Master's degree in Visual Arts from the École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes (France), I have had the opportunity to exhibit my work on numerous occasions in France in various recognized venues (Cité des congrès de Nantes, Prieuré St-Nicolas in Les Sables-d'Olonne with Amnesty International, at the Musée du vieux St Etienne for Art dans la ville, Buy-sellf in Bordeaux, etc.). I've often had the privilege of being chosen to open significant venues and events, such as the opening of Le Lieu Unique (Nantes), a photography exhibition organized by Le Clou (biennial event organized by the friends of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes), or taking part in the first Mulhouse contemporary art fair (the latter two events still exist). In Montreal, I've often exhibited performative ephemeral works linked to grass clothing: for the reopening of the Maison de la Culture Maisonneuve (exhibition and performance for Sensorium), the World Earth Festival at Saint-Jean-Baptiste Church (fashion show and performative dance), at the McCord Stewart Museum for the Montreal High Lights Festival (public trial of grass clothing) or Nuit blanche sur tableau noir (rue Mont-Royal) (clothing to be cut out). Today, my work revolves around pictorial narratives, watercolor paintings and collages on different media, which bring as much meaning as the story being told. ## Curriculum Vitae ### Education - **2000** - Master, in visual art, Beaux arts, Nantes ### Solo Exhibitions - **2026** - "Are You Playing or Sleeping?," Cinéma Beaubien Montréal - **2026** - "Cent titres," Centre des arts et loisirs Alain Larue (CALAL) Notre-Dame-des-Prairies - **2025** - "Cent titres," Maison de la culture Rosemont Petite Patrie Montréal - **2025** - "Cent titres Satellite exhibition (complementary)," Marc-Favreau Library Montréal - **2024** - "Rêve nocturne," La Galerie perchée, La Cenne Montréal ### Group Exhibitions - **2026** - "Renouveau," Laurier-Léger Building Les Coteaux - **2026** - "Les yeux grands ouverts," Galerie 521 Éclats art Contemporain (Belgo) Montréal - **2025** - "Untitled," Office of the Member of Parliament for Papineau Montréal (Curated by Joseph André) - **2025** - "Jeux de paysages," Maison de la culture Claude Léveillé Montréal - **2025** - "Art d'ici," ITHQ hotel Montréal - **2025** - "Couleurs passagères," Bibliothèque Julio Jean-Pierre Montréal (Curated by Joseph André) - **2025** - "Secret," Galerie MËL Montréal - **2025** - "Nuit blanche," Casa d'Italia Montréal - **2024** - "Art and Gastronomy," ITHQ Foundation Montréal - **2009** - "Nuit blanche sur tableau noir," rue Mont-Royal Montréal - **2008** - "Montreal High Lights Festival," McCord Stewart Museum Montréal - **2008** - "Festival mondial de la Terre," Saint-Jean-Baptiste Church Montréal - **2007** - "Festival mondial de la Terre," Saint-Jean-Baptiste Church Montréal - **2006** - "Earth Day," École nouvelle Querbes Montréal - **2005** - "Sensorium," Maison de la Culture Maisonneuve Montréal - **2003** - "Le clou," Le ô, espace d'exposition Nantes - **2002** - "Art dans la ville à Saint-Etienne," Musée du vieux St Etienne Saint-Étienne - **2002** - "Buy-sellf," Buy-sellf catalog publication Bordeaux - **2001** - "Mulhouse 001," Contemporary art fair Mulhouse - **2000** - "Exhibition for Amnesty International," Prieuré St Nicolas Les Sables-d'Olonne - **2000** - "Le Clou," Lieu Unique Nantes ### Gallery Representation - gallea, Montréal, (Current) - vesper, Montréal, (Current) ## Portfolio ### the glacier (2025) *watercolor, collage, and ink on mylar paper* *101,5 x 66 cm* like an echo of life itself, a final trace before ecosystems collapse, but also a symbol of adaptation, resilience, and silent rebirth. Terrifying yet poetic, its beauty seeps into slow decay, into a landscape unsettled by the awareness of absence. --- ### Life Hangs by a Thread (2025) *Watercolor and ink on paper, collage. Framed* *30.5 × 30.5 cm* --- ### Journey to the Center of the Earth-V3 (2025) *Sandstone (Magdalen Islands) and collage, mounted on wood* *23.5 × 23.5 cm* In this version, the stone (collected from the Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Québec) is fragile, and the paper figures are delicate. A work that speaks of disappearance and humanity. --- ### Conversation (2025) *watercolor, ink, collage on mylar paper, mounted on wood* *2 × 8 × 10 inches* --- ### the spinner (2025) *Watercolor, ink, pigment, and collage on mylar paper* *23 × 30.5 cm* The spinner, a figure who spins cotton, is also, by definition, a painter specializing in fine lines and delicate threads. Here, the figure embodies both roles. She becomes the mother of creation, forming before our eyes a work in progress, composed of fragments of imagined and vanished stories. --- ### The Strom (2025) *watercolor, ink, pigment, and collage on white mylar paper.* *358 × 150 cm* My storm, our storm—forever rumbling, sometimes near, sometimes far. It touches us, or leaves us untouched. Yet the conflict never ceases; it transforms, echoing through the ages, across lands, beliefs, and the realms of imagination. Whether the beast is real or conjured, the turmoil persists, fear lingers, and courage shines ever brighter. --- ### doubt (2024) the doubt is a piece from the Lascivious series. A young woman extends an invitation to another, who seems unsure. A similar figure, turned away, lingers nearby, reflecting the tension and duality of this moment. Will she accept the invitation—or has she already, while her double resists? In the Lascivious series, underneath the tranquil appearance of young, abandoned and serene women, the question of the spectator's place arises, even if it means making the viewer feel uncomfortable and unsettled. Indeed, intruding on the intimacy of women's spaces has always been a central theme, giving rise to fantasies and questions, as many characters seek to observe without being seen. The voyeur projects himself there, in search of a completeness that eludes him. In this space, the man often imagines that the woman, immersed in her sleep, is only waiting for a presence, an intrusion. --- ### Marine Mythologies (2024) *watercolor, collage, and ink on mylar paper* *101.5 × 67.3 cm* --- ### O Canada (2024) *collage, wood panel* *50.8 × 61 cm* The landscapes in Ô Canada are cut from an art book published in 1925 on the photographic work of Louis Hamilton about Canada. This book, found by chance and abandoned, was destined for recycling. The images, produced with a large-format camera, depict with strong contrasts a bygone era that unfolds page after page in narratives that are sometimes bucolic, sometimes wild. I reappropriated the visuals that called to me in order to reconstruct a new story—our own. The landscapes and figures in burnt sienna are composed of fragments from different Canadian provinces, while the figures in color come from France and look with a certain naïveté at their friends swimming or strolling along the beaches and shores of this new country. ## Links - **Website:** https://laetitiamatrat.my.canva.site/ - **instagram:** https://www.instagram.com/laetitia3150/