Donna Legault is an experimental artist based in Ottawa, Canada. Her work explores opportunities afforded by technology to acknowledge human/non-human relations through gesture and resonance. Her research is disseminated through modalities of motion and sound via electronic installation, sculpture, drawing, and performance.
Detail from print “Living Paper 1” 2022
Dormant Life is part of my research-creation project to investigate the remarkable capacities of algae to survive and even flourish under extreme environmental conditions brought on by climate change. Through this work, I am exploring the capacity of algae to alter their sexual behaviour in times of environmental stress and remain in a state of dormancy. Combining this behaviour under laboratory conditions with material investigations in fiber-based practices occasions an emergent form of material/organic life, living paper and living fabric. The co-constitution of these material/organic configurations act through both artistic practice and biological inquiry towards the development of a living an/archive as an alternative to the detrimental effects on the environment of long-term cryo-storage.
“Living Paper/Living Fabric” Print and installation • In/tension exhibition at Produit Rien, 2022
Photo documentation by Clark Goldsbury
I am working across material, biological, and technological practices as a PhD student of the INDI Program in Fine Art at Concordia University. My proposition is to learn from the capacities of algae, their potential for material/organic symbiosis, and the affective expression of these relations. This collaborative engagement includes bioengineers, biologists, and the affordances of the Optical Bio-Microsystems Lab (EV Complex, Concordia) and the Alisa Piekny Cellular Biology Lab (Loyola Campus, Concordia) for the emergence of interdisciplinary methodologies and transdisciplinary engagements.
Algae culture in cotton fibre slurry 2022
I would like to acknowledge the collaborative practice of papermaking and staining with Alex Noel (see Papermaking in Public Places). Our exchange of ideas, inspirations and skills occasioned my first experiments with fibre practices in a wet lab.
Sept 12 - Sept 9, 2022
In.Site Symposium
4th Space, Montreal
