For 20 years, Annie Baillargeon has explored a multidisciplinary art based on an exalted and transgressive representation of the body. Drawn to the relationship between various modes of expression, she combines digital photomontage and watercolour to create unsettling frescoes with an existentialist bent. The body, which is the central motif in her work, is multiplied, staged, and transposed in strange and whimsical worlds where farce, vulgarity, satire, and tragedy collide. The individual is shown in all her sublimity as well as her most troubling moments.
Also a performance artist, Annie Baillargeon was co-founder and member of collective Les Fermières Obsédées, and is now the founding member of multidisciplinary collective B.L.U.S.H.
Her career includes more than sixty solo and group exhibitions in artist-run centres and museums, as well as numerous participations in major events in Quebec, Canada, the United States, South America and several European countries. She has also carried out numerous projects integrating art with architecture and the environment for the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, among others. Her work has been the subject of some twenty articles and publications in addition to being awarded several prizes including the Jury Prize at the Salt Spring National Art Prize in 2015, the Videre Événement Prize in 2008, the Cornelius Krieghoff Prize in 2007 and the Jury Prize at Vidéastes recherché-es in 2001. She was also nominated for the long list of the Sobey Prize in 2017.
Her work is included in a number of public and private collections such as:
National Gallery of Canada
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec
Canada Council Art Bank
Global Affairs Canada
Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul
BMO
Desjardins Collection
Humber College
Heenan Blaikie
Loto-Québec
The City of Quebec
The City of Montreal
The City of Laval
The City of Longueuil
Méduse Collection
Cégep Saint-Hyacinthe
And private collections in Canada and Europe.
