Following a well-received first exhibition in Québec City, Chiguer is pleased to present Johanne Bilodeau’s second solo exhibition, this time at our Montreal gallery. With Mutations and Potentialities, the artist continues her exploration of the interconnected relationships between the body, the mind, and the environment. Through an ongoing dialogue with painting and an intimate engagement with material, Johanne seeks to reveal the manifestations of epigenetics—the marks left by places, cultures, and lived experiences that shape who we are. In doing so, she reflects on the traces these influences leave within us and the ways they continue to unfold over time.
A profusion of symbols and motifs emerges across the surfaces of the paintings, giving rise to singular ecosystems. Beneath their vibrant, emblematic colours lie more introspective narratives, where painting becomes a space for transformation, transmission, and care. Created slowly with a fine brush through successive layers of translucent paint, the works unfold like poems of colour. Also informed by embroidery and writing, Bilodeau’s practice develops a vocabulary of recurring forms that move through the paintings like fragments of memory.
Johanne Bilodeau is a visual artist and writer based in Québec City. Rooted in an ecofeminist perspective, her practice embodies a gentle form of resistance to the ecological crisis. By drawing parallels between the health of natural ecosystems and that of our inner landscapes, she has developed an organic visual language centred on the symbolic model of the garden: a space shaped by human hands, yet founded on coexistence, reciprocity, and balance among all living communities.
