BIOGRAPHY

 

Sculptor, landartist, videographer and landscape designer, Sandra Tannous has produced several exhibitions in Quebec, France, Switzerland and Brazil. Based in Montreal, she is a co-founder of the Lezarts Cooperative for visual and media artists and a member of the Association des Architectes paysagistes du Québec.

 

Sensitive on the one hand to the problems of the city, then, of the relationship that human beings establish with their environment, she tries to recreate a harmony between urban space, natural space, art and man. . His intention is in particular to create works in a public environment, open and physically accessible projects, in order to expose all passers-by to the paradigmatic potential of art. The games of scales (human / monumental) offer multiple possibilities, while the existing elements (eg landscape, history, heritage, environment, architecture) offer a disparate narrative from which Sandra Tannous weaves a coherent narrative.

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In 2011 and 2013, she produced “Laine d'Art” and “Lisière”, two projects produced during annual events dedicated to Land Art. In 2012, she designed the public art project “Rassemblement”, which she produced in collaboration with the Lezarts cooperative. Between 2013 and 2014, she designed “Réverbères Bleus” with Delphine Quach, an urban art project produced in Montreal. In 2016, she worked in Basel in Switzerland, in 2017 in Salvador in Brazil, as part of a workshop-residency. She is currently working on the development of various projects. Subsequently she will put her energies on urban public art, as well as on other gallery exhibition projects.

 

http://www.voiesculturelles.qc.ca/sandra-tannous/

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APPROACH

 

My work arises from questions about the needs and environment of human beings. I try to understand how, and with what, he arranges his space; and what meaning can be drawn from the buildings, instruments and tools he makes. Since 2008, I have been more particularly sensitive to the problems of the city, to the relationship that human beings establish with their environment, and I try to create a harmony between the presentation space, the urban space, the natural space. and man. My artistic approach goes from the gallery to the exterior and vice versa.

 

These interests are expressed through sculpture and video, then more recently landscape art, which I see as a hybrid practice, where notions of environmental design and landscape architecture are integrated into my practice of installation in order to serve the reflection on the places of reception of the work. Using typical architectural forms - citadels, Greek theaters or others‒, my outdoor installations respond to the architectural, landscape and historical heritages of the given sites, thus weaving a coherent narrative between the various elements of the place.

 

Regarding sculpture, my references often come from contexts relating to navigation, urban, industrial and rural architecture, from which I draw typical clean and serial forms (bridges, quays, water towers). The result is a work oscillating between the symbolic status of the object, its degree of abstraction, its polymorphism and its polysemy allowing a game of universal association. In fact, the archetypal quality of these forms is at the heart of my practice; I try to reach it, to seize it in order to awaken the reminiscences, these vague memories, this unconscious knowledge, and so to speak timeless, linked to objects and their forms that have long existed in human culture.

 

More concretely, for each project, I carry out formal research, a synthesis of objects with common properties. In this sense, my works are arrangements of signs: the forms I make have an evocative character, which never refers to a specific object but rather to a repertoire, behind which loom uses, needs and a deeper meaning. that I seek to express.

 

This meaning can be found in my intention to produce a double effect on the viewer. First of all, to suggest activities of the body, to revive consciousness, whether through the utilitarian aspect of the sculptures, their scale or the kinesthetic experience to which they are appropriate: actions of bending, ascending or descending, sensation to be included. Secondly, I try to provoke a questioning in the spectator: my works being based on formal syntheses, they arouse different associations of ideas. These, in turn, require that we seek consistency, that we find the key. Combined with the experience of the body, they lead to the discovery of analogies between the activities of the body and those of the mind.

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