NEW PUBLICS
Pretending for real (working title)
April 24 – July 4, 2026
Artists
La Famille Plouffe (Guillaume Boudrias-Plouffe, Émilie Levert, Emeline, Léo et Zéphir Plouffe)
Curators
Gentiane Bélanger & Camila Vásquez
Overview
Pretending for real (working title) explores the undisclosed aspects of public art through an immersive installation combining models, mock-ups, fictional archives, and scripted performances. The exhibition reveals—and allows visitors to experience—the inner workings of a system that is as standardized as it is mysterious: that of model presentations before juries in the context of public art competitions in Quebec.
For nearly ten years, La Famille Plouffe has been designing public artworks integrated into locations and communities throughout Quebec. However, for each work realized, several proposals, often ambitious and intimately linked to their context, remain invisible. This exhibition acts as a living archaeology of these rejected projects: they are reconstructed, remixed, exaggerated—as if to offer them another form of existence, even if only under the spotlight of a “shadow theater.”
In an atmosphere of performative docufiction and augmented vernacular, the exhibition is structured like an enlarged model of a model presentation, with all the ritual elements of the genre: projected 3D models, material samples, printed documents (preamble, inspirations, maintenance estimates, schedule, etc.), physical models, audio excerpts from interviews, and 3D-printed witness characters.
The proposal is based on a speculative project: a public artwork designed for the exterior of the Foreman Art Gallery, but transposed indoors without compromising its scale, overflowing the walls and conventions. The work, fictional or not, is inspired by Rita Tinker, great-grandmother of the children of La Famille Plouffe and member of a snowshoe club in Sherbrooke. It enters into dialogue with the film Les Raquetteurs (Brault and Groulx), a precursor of direct cinema shot in the same city. A fake commission for a real gallery; a real proposal for a work that may not yet exist. A mise en abyme where we no longer know what is staged or sincere, fictional or documentary.
In short, Pretending for real is a sculptural metalepsis: an artistic proposition that makes the process its subject, and pretense a sincere form of engagement. The audience is invited to explore a universe where truth and falsehood merge, where the model becomes the work, and where every detail, even the most absurd, contributes to a generously overplayed staging of art as a collective project.
Artists
We at La Famille Plouffe have been on a collaborative creative journey since each member came into the lives of the others. We deliberately embrace this shared identity to recognize and honor each person’s contribution, thereby challenging the myth of the solitary artistic genius. It was during a family stay in 2016 at Maisons Daura, an international artist residency in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France, that we decided to make this change official.
Since then, we have participated in, among other events, the 35th International Symposium of Contemporary Art in Baie-Saint-Paul (2017), the 2nd Triennale Banlieue! at the Maison des Arts de Laval (2018), the 9th National Biennial of Contemporary Sculpture at the Musée POP in Trois-Rivières (2020), the SEULS et ENSEMBLE residency event, creating connections in the Magdalen Islands with Ad Mare (2021), Racontages at the Centre d’art Jacques-et-Michel Auger in Victoriaville (2021), the Orange event in Saint-Hyacinthe (2025), and a creative residency for Faire terroir: Géorécit with Vrille art actuel in La Pocatière (2025). We have also presented solo exhibitions with Action Art Actuel in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu (2017), Vaste et Vague in Carleton-sur-Mer (2018), Langage Plus in Alma (2019) and the Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay (2022). Next, a series of exhibitions in close collaboration with Atelier le Fil d’Ariane in the Maisons de la Culture de Montréal network: Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie (2022), L’entrepôt [Lachine] (2022), and Mercier (2023).
Since 2015, we have had the privilege of being invited to more than fifty public art competitions as part of municipal or provincial public art policies. Just over twenty public artworks, both permanent and temporary, have been created as a result of these competitions, invitations, personal initiatives, and calls for applications. We are currently preparing the installation of several other permanent public artworks and several model presentations. Our creative journey in public art has taken us to a variety of contexts: elementary, specialized, and secondary schools; senior and alternative housing; public libraries; parks; a bike path; hospitals; arenas; a convention center; museums; an exhibition center; daycare centers; and more.
Through our philosophical stance, we propose that everything previously accomplished in the name of Guillaume Boudrias-Plouffe was, in fact, accomplished by the Plouffe family. Similarly, Guillaume has represented the family in the past in projects in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, France, Ivory Coast, and Italy. The same applies to all the awards, scholarships, and grants received at the time in his own name, for example: the Culture Montérégie award, the Joseph S. Stauffer award from the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as scholarships from the Longueuil Arts Council, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2022, the family received the CALQ’s Artist of the Year Award in Montérégie, although for administrative reasons it was Guillaume who submitted the application. Guillaume de La Famille Plouffe is also a member of the board of directors of 3e impérial, a contemporary art testing center (chairman), and has been a member of the board of directors of the Regroupement des centres d’artistes autogérés du Québec.
Curators
Gentiane Bélanger holds a PhD in art history from UQÀM (2020) and has been the director-curator of the Foreman Art Gallery at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke since June 2015. Her research interests lie at the intersection of contemporary art, ecology, and materialist philosophies. Her doctoral thesis focuses specifically on the importance of material culture in the actualization of ecological discourse in contemporary art. She sits on the board of directors of the Sporobole contemporary art center and is a regular contributor to various specialized journals, including C Magazine, esse, Espace, ETC, and Plastik art & science (Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).
Camila Vásquez is an interdisciplinary artist of Chilean origin. She lives and works in the countryside of Quebec, in the Eastern Townships, on the ancestral lands of the W8banaki Nation, the Ndakina. She has been working in the arts since 2005 as an artist, teacher, curator, mediator, and cultural worker. Her artistic practice is embodied in everyday life and develops in long-term projects that challenge the boundaries between art and other spheres of life, as well as dominant conceptions of social space and knowledge. Her work has been presented in various art centers, galleries, and events in Argentina, Chile, Spain, and Quebec, as well as independently or furtively. She is currently the coordinator of the Community Art Lab at Bishop’s University’s Foreman Art Gallery. Her influences include the thinking and pedagogy of David Tomas, Sylvie Tourangeau’s approach to performance as a way of life, the infiltrating art rooted in the reality of the 3e impérial and the artists who gravitate around it, as well as avant-garde artistic currents interested in the links between art and life.
