Magali Baribeau-Marchand takes a very different approach towards intimacy and the banality of everyday life by designing installations that are colourful metaphors for things that often go unnoticed by the casual observer. Using digital printing, she produces images that reflect on the passage of time on living entities and inanimate objects, creating an imaginary world that focuses on the commonplace and highlighting the sense of wonder they can evoke. 

In this exhibition, entitled Factice Nature, Magali Barbeau-Marchand draws us into the dream-like universe of her two art installations. The backdrop to the first one is a series of images of the Kegashka ponds in the Lower North Shore, coastal landscapes that range from the nondescript to majestic. These hyper-realistic scenes rendered in soft focus, culminate at the wreck of the Brion, a boat that ran aground near these ponds in the 1970s. Some of the same photographs are incorporated into the second installation – a video presentation entitled Inventaire aléatoire des choses qui vibrent. Projected onto a felt screen, the video echoes the themes of the first installation, taking the viewer into the artist’s reimagined world. 

Magali Baribeau-Marchand lives in Saguenay, where she completed a Master’s degree in Visual Arts at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC). She has taken part in a number of artists’ residencies in Quebec, France, Russia and Belgium. In recent years, she has been very involved in her community in Saguenay, collaborating with other artists in group exhibitions. In 2022, Magali Baribeau-Marchand was awarded the Yvonne L. Bombardier Visual Arts Scholarship.