Laurence Gravel

Born in Baie-Saint-Paul i Quebec. Lives and works in Quebec City

Laurence Gravel is a visual artist holding a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual and Media Arts (2018) and a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts (2024) from Université Laval.

A multidisciplinary artist, Gravel develops her practice at the intersection of popular culture and historical and contextual references, creating spaces for reflection that are both critical and humorous. Her projects take shape through material and immaterial media, oscillating between the manipulation of matter and conceptual approaches. She works across video, installation, photography, performance, action, sculpture, and writing, approaching these forms as spaces for experimentation.

Performance occupies a central place in her work, both in the action itself and in the object. She activates objects imbued with performative potential, either through their conceptual weight or through the meticulous attention paid to their creation. Performance allows her to shift the everyday into meaningful situations and offer a poetic interpretation in which the banal becomes a revealer of human experience and often invisible social dynamics.

Her body, presence, and self-representation are essential tools. She stages herself or embodies other feminine identities to question femininity, its social and symbolic constructions, and its relationship to things, norms, and the world. This position allows her to explore individual and collective emancipation while blurring the lines between seriousness and humor, introspection and play.

She approaches failure, abandonment, and risk as search engines—points of friction with reality that reveal the value of error. This approach is part of what she calls a “poetry of distance,” in which incongruity, subtle humor, and the testing of situations shift perspectives, create connections with others, and allow her to address sensitive realities without confronting them directly.

Since 2017, Gravel has presented solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions and performance events in Quebec and internationally. Her recent projects include presentations at Le Lieu, l’Œil de poisson, Avatar / Mois Multi, and The Listening Biennial. In 2026, she will tour Latin America with performances at La Cápsula in Mexico and GALPON F.A.C.E. in Argentina, before participating in Live Action 21.