Alphiya Joncas
in Petite-Vallée
EXHIBITION
Les impermanences (Impermanence)
Alphiya Joncas, Havre-aux-Maisons (Québec) | alphiyajoncas.com
“The ways of inhabiting a region are many. You can make a home there, or just look; it can be walked, narrated, photographed. You can not be there, and carry it with you all the same.
“Living in a place like the Magdalen Islands means having the awareness at all times of being in a region that erosion is breaking down and that will one day disappear. Above all, it’s crossing places that are constantly changing, an endless playground. On the islands there are territory-spaces and instant-spaces in which I live so hard that I’m sure they haven’t existed except for me and for those I share them with. There’s something ephemeral about these encounters between place, space, time and seeing that makes the home infinite. In work where the image is fragmented then stuck back together, I recompose new landscapes where my gaze comes to rest and settles in. Here, all the images are homes, are attempts to live.” – Alphiya Joncas
Exhibition at Rencontres
Les impermanences (Impermanence)
Born in Russia, Alphiya Joncas is an artist who lives and works in the Magdalen Islands. Her practice, imbued with an islander’s poetics, unfolds primarily by way of photographic and textual mediums. Alphiya holds a bachelor’s degree in visual and media arts from Université Laval. She has presented her work in a solo exhibit at the AdMare artist center (Magdalen Islands, 2017), and has also been part of group exhibitions: VU (Québec City, 2017), Espace Parenthèse (Québec City, 2019), and at the Monique-Corriveau library as part of the young curators program of Manif d’art 9 – La biennale de Québec (Québec City, 2019). She worked as a duo with the artist and author Vickie Grondin during her Carte pleine residency in fall 2021, again at AdMare (Magdalen Islands, 2021). The same year, the two artists wrote a first book of poetry entitled Il fait bleu, a four-hand work published by Éditions OMRI (Montreal, 2021).