Sébastien Cliche: UQAM recipient of the 2012 Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art

Sébastien Cliche has received a 2012 Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art Fellowship. The two-year award, valued at approximately $55,000, will allow him to develop his professional practice, undertake and exhibit his research/creation and broaden his teaching experience. Cliche will receive his master's in visual and media arts from UQAM in 2012.

The announcement was made on May 3, 2012, at the opening of the fellowship exhibit by inaugural 2010 Concordia winner Steve Bates.

"It's a great opportunity to have such support for the transition from the academic setting to the professional environment," said Cliche. "Several projects began to take shape during my master's and it's very encouraging to know that I will have the flexibility to finish them."

Through photographs, installations, Web projects and audiovisual performances, Cliche questions the ambiguity of the relationships we cultivate with security. His research focuses on the defense mechanisms that structure the relationship between the individual and society.

His work has appeared in several solo and group exhibitions, including Toronto's Meredith Keith Gallery (2011), l'Å'il de poisson in Quebec City (2010), and the Centre d'art contemporain de Meymac (France, 2008).  In 2007 he curated the exhibition L'Oreille dans l'oeil/The Hearing Eye, which was shown in Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec City. In 2010, he presented his audiovisual project L'Inertie agitée (Restless) during the MUTEK festival in Montreal. Future exhibitions include a show at Momenta Art in Brooklyn, New York, in 2013.

Cliche has completed five residencies, including one at the Centre européen d'actions artistiques contemporaines in Strasbourg, France, and has been the recipient of several major awards, two Canada Council for Arts grants among them.