About Cynthia Girard

Cynthia Girard is a Montréal-based visual artist, satirist, and poet. At the core of her work is the practice of painting, which she extends into other media such as installation, sculpture, and performance. Her work favours vernacular culture and the applied arts, and her influences are voluntarily eclectic: from movements such as abstract art, Dadaism, Op Art, conceptual art, and surrealism, to cartoons, feminist crafts, decorative arts, children’s illustrations, and burlesque theatre. Girard infuses politics with whimsical imagery to produce a carnivalesque theatrical experiment in which identities are suspended to make way for new fantastical hybrids.

Recent exhibitions include: À mes amies les licornes (2013), Parisian Laundry, Montréal; Pierre Vallières + Josée Yvon (2012), OPTICA, Montréal; The Journey of a Button to the West (2011), A Thousand Plateaus Art Space, Chengdu; The Black Glove and the Peacock (2010), Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina; Le Tyran Tritri (2010), La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, Montréal; Tous les oiseaux sont ici (2009), Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Cynthia’s Revels (2009), September Gallery, Berlin; Fictions sylvestres (2005), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Girard has also presented her work in major group exhibitions such as the Quebec Triennial in 2008.

Girard holds a Master’s in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College, London, and she currently teaches visual arts at L’Université du Québec à Montréal. Her work is found in the collections of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, as well as many private collections.