New Cadieux artwork in Paris

A new artwork by Geneviève Cadieux, La Voix lactée, was unveiled October 4 in the Saint-Lazare station of the Paris metro system.

The work will resonate with Montrealers as it recalls La Voie lactée, the large scale photographic work produced by Cadieux that depicts a pair of lips and is mounted on the roof the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MACM). The new piece in Paris is a large-scale photomosaic tile work.

Geneviève Cadieux, photography professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts, shown here between Jean Charest (L), Premier of Québec and Lucien Bouchard (R), former Premier of Québec, at the unveiling, by Michel Labrecque, chairman of the board of the STM, of La Voix Lactée in the Paris métro’s Saint-Lazare station. | Photo courtesy of STM

Cadieux’s work was selected in a juried competition as the official gift of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), to the Paris transit system, the Régie autonome des transports parisiens (RATP), to mark its 150th anniversary. 

In 2003, the RATP officially donated to the STM the wrought iron grillwork outside Montreal’s Square-Victoria metro station, a piece that had been loaned several decades earlier. This launched an agreement between the two transit systems to exchange public works of art, with the French language as the theme, in order to highlight the linguistic and cultural affinities that link the two cities. La Voix lactée is intended to project the Paris commuter into the space of the body, the mouth and the lips, sources of the voice and of language.

For this latest competition, Cadieux won out over 36 artists who submitted work for consideration to the international jury composed of leading figures in Montreal’s visual arts community as well as officials from both the Parisian and Montreal transit authorities. 

Cadieux made the trip to Paris in the company of the Premier of Québec Jean Charest, the Mayor of Montréal Gérald Tremblay, the STM Chairman of the Board of Directors Michel Labrecque and other members of a delegation to mark the 50th anniversary of the Québec Government Office in Paris.

Geneviève Cadieux is an associate professor of photography in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University. This past spring, she received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in recognition of her remarkable artistic career.

Related links:
•    STM media release
•    Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts
•    Announcement of STM selection of Cadieux artwork
•    "Geneviève Cadieux receives Governor General's Award” – NOW, February 22, 2011