Originally from the Laurentians, Geneviève Dagenais is a sculptor based in Montreal (Tiohtià:ke). With support from the Dale & Nick Tedeschi Studio Arts Fellowship and the Graduate Studio Arts Advisory Committee Award, she is currently pursuing her Master of Fine Arts (Sculpture and Ceramics) at Concordia. She holds a Bachelor of Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2022), where she received the Thomas Corriveau and Mario Côté Award for Excellence as well as a grant from the Faculty of Arts Fund. Her work was featured at Artch in 2021, where she received the Loto-Québec Coup de cœur Award, and at Arprim (2022), where she won the Albert-Dumouchel Emerging Artist Award. Her work has been supported by the CALQ—Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec—and featured in numerous group exhibitions, notably at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Art Souterrain, Galerie C, Circa Art actuel, and the Centre d’art Diane Dufresne. She presented her first solo exhibition "Ombre portée" at the Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul in 2025.
Photo credit: Mathilda Rubio
My work is primarily expressed through ceramics and textiles, two mediums through which I explore their sensory, emotional, and symbolic dimensions. I am particularly interested in the concepts of imprint and transmutation, and in the potential that materials have to preserve and transform.
The body occupies a central place in my practice. It functions simultaneously as a tool, a measure, and an emotional space. Through sewing and molding, I create forms that lie halfway between figuration and abstraction, where folds, tensions, volumes, and cavities evoke the anatomy of what might have been. The material thus becomes a place where the body, time, and memory converge.
I manipulate materials in their transitional states, between rigidity and malleability, to capture the imprints of gestures and passages. I draw on material ambiguity to shift our perceptual reference points and thereby evoke an experience of objects that is at once physical, tactile, and emotional.