BIOGRAPHY

Née à Montréal, au Canada. Vit et travaille à Vancouver, au Canada.

Annie Briard is an artist from Montreal based in Vancouver. She has a bachelor’s in visual arts from Concordia University in Montreal and master’s in visual arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. Represented by Mónica Reyes Gallery in Vancouver and by Joyce Yahouda Gallery in Montreal, Briard has taken part in individual and group exhibitions at the AC Institute in New York, U.S.A., the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Matadero Madrid Centre in Spain, the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing, China, and the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel, among others.

Solo exhibition

la bande vidéo

Staring at the Sun, 2016-2020, video installation.

Staring at the Sun calls up the old adage, inviting viewers to risk blindness by prolonging their gaze. In a dark room, an enigmatic projection appears on a wall in front of two chairs. As the disc-shaped projection moves through the chromatic spectrum of visible light, the blinding strength of the sun it represents seems to be subdued, its constitutive colours broken down and compartmentalized. Nevertheless, the device triggers an unexpectedly complex psycho-emotional phenomenon. The installation is supported by low-frequency ambient audio, which Briard has specifically designed to arouse somatic responses, using a frequency discovered by NASA that is often associated with paranormal apparitions because it causes the iris to vibrate, potentially provoking visual hallucinations. Contributing to the immersive experience is a second sound reverberating in the space, this one based on the theta rhythm, which is used in neurological research to activate organic visual functions. The device produces lingering images, illusions of movement and chimeric colours in the spectators’ minds. Briard blurs the line between the tangible and the imaginary, drawing our attention to the conjectural instability of perception.