Biography
Myriam Yates’ works are displayed in the form of large video projections or photographic series. She favors a hybrid approach to image between a certain form of document and video essay. She is interested in the construction of public space, the articulation between architecture and urbanism, the junctions between planning and nature as well as the notion of territory. Her works have been presented at events such as Kassel Dokfest (Germany), Images Festival (Toronto), Rencontres Internationales Paris / Berlin, le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, International Festival of Films on Art (Montreal) and Nuit Blanche Toronto. They have been the subject of individual and collective exhibitions, notably at the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University (Sherbrooke), the Hessel Museum of Art (New York), the Montreal Contemporary Art Museum, at OPTICA, a center for contemporary art and Dazibao (Montreal). An essay in the Prefix Photo Magazine review on improbable architectures was devoted to her videographic works accompanying an exhibition at the Prefix Gallery (Toronto). In 2015, she won the Victor-Martyn-Lynch-Staunton Prize (media arts) from the Canada Council for the Arts. Originally from Montreal, she currently lives in Sherbrooke. Her projects are regularly funded by the Québec and the Canada Councils for the Arts.
Artist Statement
I am interested in the relationship between places and their representation, often taking as anchor modern or transition sites, whose unique status questions the links between the individual, modernity and architecture. My works take the form of large video projections or photographic series.
I point my camera on singular places having a resonance in the collective imagination. Interested in their layout and their special vocation, I examine the places from an architectural and urban angle with marked attention to public space. The dynamics of urban space, the transformation of architecture, the privatization of public space and the territory are at the heart of my works. I try to put forward the qualities specific to the places chosen to subtly raise the social and political issues that underlie them.
I try to create works of hybrid forms between video art and documentary, in line with a specific approach anchored in the visual arts. The images deployed invite to project other temporalities, to explore their liminal areas. More recently, I’m interested in the representation of the links that can be created between urban developments, the landscape, land art and minimalist art. I also focus on the notion of territory to reveal poetic situations that may arise between it and people who live in or pass through it.