The Conseil des métiers d'art du Quebec and the Maison des métiers d'art de Québec aim to promote the development and training, as well as the outreach and dissemination of creators and artisans working in Quebec. The two organizations are true engines for the dissemination of contemporary Quebec craft practices beyond the borders of Canada. Together with the Délégation générale du Québec à Paris, they are presenting two banquets as part of Quebec, nation à l'honneur. Quebec’s pieces presented reveals the originality, diversity and quality of today's fine crafts, which are the result of the richness and work of its creators. The crafts, as understood in these exhibitions, are true catalysts of innovation in various disciplines.
They propose practices oriented around the material and the gesture as the source of the creative intention, by their nature, their link with the body, space and time. The exhibition also considers the evolution of First Nations artistic production, where the distinctions between craft and visual arts are unclear and where cultural symbolic references are strongly present.
Quebec's arts and crafts sector is undergoing a major transformation and is turning towards transdisciplinarity. Artists are developing hybrid practices that combine several languages in order to put forward their message. In her installations, Mérida Anderson brings together ceramics and graphic art. The transposition of techniques into other materials or scales is found in the paper basketry work of Julie Bénédicte Lambert, as well as in the sculptures of Maude Lauzière-Dumas, whose training in jewellery inspires her assembly methods. Juxtapositions of materials are favoured by Montserrat Duran Muntadas, who combines blown glass with textiles, and by Catherine Granche, whose silver and gold jewellery incorporates porcelain mouldings and shaping. In a more symbiotic way, Paula Murray integrates fibreglass with porcelain, forcing the material to crack under the tension induced by this marriage of incompatible materials.
