Valerie LeBlanc

About*

Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, pluri-­disciplinary artist and writer Valerie LeBlanc has worked in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia. Her creations travel between poetry, performance, visual, and written theory. Valerie LeBlanc has been creating video poetry since the mid-1980’s and is the creator of the MediaPackBoard (MPB), portable screening / performance device.

Originaire de Halifax, Valerie LeBlanc est une vidéaste, poète et essayiste. Cette artiste pluridisciplinaire a travaillé au Canada, aux États-Unis, en France et en Australie. Elle crée des poèmes vidéo depuis le milieu des années 1980, en favorisant le temps non spectaculaire et la beauté d’une esthétique ready-made. Elle a créé, en 2005,  le MediaPackBoard (MPB), un appareil de projection mobile pour la performance.

As a pluridisciplinary artist, I use photos, moving images, texts-as-image, sound or combinations of media, depending on the needs of a particular project. I work in series that are spread over time. Many of my works are anchored in specific geographical territories, but sometimes the roots are political, social or philosophical. There are times when the essence of a place is such that it demands attention. At other times, an object calls out to be addressed.

Pluri-disciplinary Canadian artist and writer Valerie LeBlanc, exhibits nationally and internationally. Her creations travel between image/text, performance and theory.

 

A 1993 MFA graduate, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Times Arts, LeBlanc was a Faculty Member in the Media Arts + Digital Technologies, Alberta College of Art + Design (AU Arts) 2000-2007. After beginning a Research PhD, University of Sydney, AU (2013), LeBlanc returned to Moncton, New Brunswick.

 

Homecoming, LeBlanc’s first video was collected and shown during the opening of the National Gallery of Canada, 1988. She was included in the CCCA’s Canadian Art Database (2005) and in the Fringe Online Project of Vtape and the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, 2009.

 

At the Banff Centre, she was an Associate in the Media Arts Department as well as an Artist in Residence (AIR) in the Visual Arts, Writing, and Music Departments. LeBlanc was AIR in Vallauris, France and Visiting Scholar at SCA, Sydney, Australia. She was a Fellow at the Everglades National Park, Florida, AIR at the Deering Estate, Miami, and at the Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast, Osprey, FL. More recently, LeBlanc carried out explorations of the Fundy Biosphere with her long-time collaborator Daniel H. Dugas. Beginning in 2017 and culminating in a video-based installation at the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery (2021). The project also includes the 2022 publication Fundy.

 

In 2005, LeBlanc created the MediaPackBoard (MPB) a portable screening/performance apparatus used as impetus for events involving art centres, and audiences/participants. This 10 years’ experiment is documented in the MPB-X: Critical Discourse Surrounding Ideas of Portability in Art and Art Dissemination (2014).

 

In 1998 LeBlanc created the commissioned sculpture Courage and Hope. On permanent display at Moncton City Hall, the work commemorates the women lost in the Montréal Massacre, and offers hope. Also in 1998, as part of establishing the Faucet Media Centre, Sackville’s Struts Gallery, commissioned LeBlanc to write a history of NB time-based art. This is the Time, This is the Place was published in NB Media Ticks.

 

LeBlanc has published and distributed videopoetry and writing online since the late 1990s. In 2001, she launched her Purplefireworks – working wordsite. In 2004, she wrote Facts and Artifacts in the Collective Memory Matrix. The essay examined issues surrounding cultural repositories. The co-created Everglades, image/text book, was nominated for the 2018 Éloizes Literature Award. Also co-authored, Videopoetry/Vidéopoésie, was published by Small Walker Press, Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON (2020).  This two-volume compendium documents individual and collaborative works from the mid-eighties to 2018.

 

In 2020, LeBlanc and Dugas, presented Habitat at the Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen, Moncton. Habitat was curated by Jonathan Lamy for the Festival International du Cinéma francophone en Acadie.

 

Splitting Image, from Downtown, LeBlanc’s billboard-based series, was curated by Tom Konyves into the Surrey Art Gallery’s Poets with a Video Camera: Videopoetry 1980–2020. The exhibition, the largest retrospective of videopoetry in Canada, featured works by some of the world’s leading practitioners.