NEW PUBLICS
Hyper Plush
May 2 – July 5, 2025
Artist
Lysanne Picard
Curators
Gentiane Bélanger & Camila Vásquez
Overview
What would our built environment look like if it were truly adapted to cognitive diversity and sensory experiences? In this collaborative drawing project involving kids and students, Lysanne Picard envisions a utopia, designed with neurodiversity in mind. Having ADHD herself, and collaborating with children and adults of diverse cognitive profiles, she explores the concept of softer architectural landscapes—spaces that are gentler, more inclusive, and likely more harmonious for everyone. Through the process of drawing, she invites us to dream about an imaginative world where physical environments are better shaped by the diverse sensory and cognitive needs of its inhabitants.
This project is part of our youth-based exhibition series, New Publics. Its research & mediation components have been coordinated in collaboration with the Foreman Art Gallery’s ArtLab.
Artist
Lysanne Picard is a Quebec artist who lives and works in Sherbrooke, on the unceded Abenaki territory. She holds a bachelor’s degree in design from Concordia University and a graduate diploma in contemporary art practices from the Université de Sherbrooke. She is interested in drawing and collaboration as a means of imagining utopias and alternative worlds adapted to neurodiversity.
Her artistic practice is deeply influenced by her community commitments and experiences. From 2011 to 2019, she worked in an art studio in Montreal with people living at the intersection of homelessness and mental health. In 2021, she founded Club de dessin Sherbrooke, a community art project focused on collaborative drawing. More recently, she completed a year-long social art residency with the Tremplin 16-30 community in Sherbrooke.
Her work has been presented at the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke, Espace Projet in Montreal and Stewart Hall Cultural Centre in Pointe-Claire, among others.
