Portrait of Dominique Blain,

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Dominique Blain is a 2024 winner of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts.

Video directed by Emilie Baillargeon.

A presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance.

The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm’s-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) “to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts.”

For more information, visit: https://en.ggarts.ca

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Transcript:

Filmmaker: I really like this portrait. There’s something assertive about it, yet at the same time withdrawn, observant.

Dominique Blain: Do you think it represents my work?

Filmmaker: I do. Maybe I’m making things up?

Dominique Blain: No, not at all. No.

I think art truly is an essential tool to speak to what’s real.

And I appreciate the fact that I have this voice.

I’m privileged, and I never forget it.

Here, I wrote “colonialist”… There! This is the kind of photo I found a lot of.

What I’d always been interested in were archival documents, like what I could find in newspapers, magazines, old books. I’ve always been drawn to images like those. Not so much to talk about the past but rather to bring them into the present.

The images that often shock us today were acceptable at the time. Something else that’s important to me is first to resurrect these images that would otherwise be forgotten and, second, to physically give these images a second life that they would no longer have.

For many years, I kept newspaper articles about the wars I’ve known, and I didn’t know what I would do with the headlines. By creating this sculpture, which is now held in a museum, these newspaper articles live on.

Very early on, people labelled my work as political, and I was surprised because I hadn’t thought of it that way; I wasn’t looking to contextualize my work—I simply did it.

I very quickly realized that it was not so much political discourse that interested me; rather I was interested in critical thought. And that’s what I try to do: I invite audiences to think with me.
So, the pattern on this rug is made up of anti-personnel mines still manufactured around the world today.

I try to bring realities like these back to us.

I haven’t experienced these conflicts. I am not the type of artist who does fieldwork. I have the opportunity to address these topics and show this work. I feel a certain amount of responsibility towards it. I don’t do it lightly. I try to do it carefully.

I know the limits in terms of what my art can do to change the world, but I also know that being quiet is no way to contribute or help situations progress. This is my own way of being able to live in the world we live in.

#GGArts2024 #DominiqueBlain #CanadaCouncil

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