Art helps Mathieu Léger 'make sense of a world that seems to make less sense every day'

Mathieu Léger calls himself a "serial artist-in-residence." The Moncton-based multidisciplinarian has participated in nearly 100 artists' residencies, bringing his inquisitive and nomadic art practice to cities across Canada, the U.S. and Europe. 

This sense of adventure and exploration in the unfamiliar propels the artist's core inquiries into time, myth, identity and place. He examines these questions through a variety of different methods and media, including performance, drawing, photography, printmaking, video and sound. 

At the National Gallery of Canada's Sobey Art Award exhibition, Léger, the finalist from the Atlantic region, presents a series revolving around the drum kit. The artist embosses paper by striking it with drumsticks, he makes prints with copper plates dented from being played upon and he uses a cymbal fitted with a pencil to record its action. Each is an exercise to make visible the traces of his performance as well as an experiment in the compression and expansion of time.

To get to know the six finalists from across Canada contending for the $100,000 Sobey Art Award, CBC Arts sent a questionnaire to each artist. Read on to learn about the things Léger absolutely needs to work his best, how art and science are alike and what's the most impactful work of art he experienced in the past year. 

The winner of the 2024 Sobey Art Award will be announced on Nov. 9. You can find all of our 2024 Sobey Art Award coverage here. 

When did you know you'd be an artist?

I am not certain when I knew I had become an artist. This is a tricky question for me. I think being an artist is obvious to me now, but perhaps this way of thinking about the world existed in me from the beginning.

What does art allow you to do? 

Art allows me to be completely curious about the world. It permits discovery and play within any discipline or subject. Art also allows me to translate the world into objects and ideas. It helps me make sense of a world that seems to make less sense every day. 

As a communicative device, art permits exchange and permits growth of concepts that, hopefully, help me contribute to cultural nomenclature. Art allows me to connect seemingly disparate ideas and generate new ways of perceiving the world to show how everything is symbiotic. Art allows compassion, empathy and seeing things in myriad ways.

Is there a question, inquiry or investigation central to your art practice? What is it? 

I think my inquiry into the world through art would be about time. I am interested in every form that time takes within the perception of being human: how time expands, compresses, accumulates, dissolves, etc.

Why do you practice the disciplines you do? 

I think that all the ways I create art are intertwined. I often say that an idea comes first, then a discipline is chosen for its ability to translate that concept.

How does place influence your art? 

Place is a context where culture hopes to define itself, in my opinion. I think place plays a very important role in art research and creation. However, it depends on where and how you define "place"; this location can be a very small site or it can be a much larger territory. 

I think time also plays an integral role in the idea of place. A location's memory is so much longer than our own. Place is tied to identity — our DNA comes from a place that is far away, both geographically and temporally. I think we rarely think about that.

To work best, what do you absolutely need? 

This should be a simple answer for me: To work best, I need a space to work, time and some resources, which can be financial and material. But the other truth is that I need a great partner, an interested community and a supportive family. Luckily, I have the best of all three.

What was the most impactful work of art — in any medium — you experienced this past year?

The most impactful work I have experienced in the past year was a concert by Daniel Lanois and his trio. The performance, dynamics and harmonies made the music very intense and meaningful. I truly enjoy his ability to transform his songs in different, beautiful ways every time I see him live.

If you weren't an artist, what would you like to do for work? 

Science, but I cannot not be an artist. I think art is very similar to science in that it is interested in understanding the world; it looks for links between things. Both disciplines are problem solvers. The difference with artists is that they try to find a solution to a problem they have also created.

Can you tell us about the artwork you're showing at the National Gallery of Canada for the Sobey Art Award exhibition? 

The main body of work I am showing at the National Gallery of Canada is called Performing the Act That Makes the Mark, Which Makes the Sound, and it comes from about four or five years of research and creation. These works inquire into concepts of time, myth and place. I am presenting works that speak about history, identity, genetics and culture, all the while presenting images that are somewhat abstract, but, I hope, performatively poetic. 

The installation contains works on paper, etchings, video, sound, sculpture and a few performances. The work looks at my ancestry and culture, while thinking more broadly about genetics overall, ideas around nature and nurture, and my place in the world. I am interested in how to translate a trace of something that is sound-based, and how to represent the compression or expansion of time in a visual artwork.

How does it exemplify your practice? 

This work exemplifies my art practice in that it is an amalgamation of mediums and disciplines I mostly practice separately. To create this installation, I was interested in how I could blend ideas of performance art, visual art and music. I think this body of work presents elements of how I work, while providing poetic links about some of the main themes that inhabit my work generally: time, space, myth. My work requires conceptual ties and many layers of meaning, and I think this is present in the exhibition if one takes the time to look, read and see how the elements speak to each other.

The winner of the 2024 Sobey Art Award will be announced on Nov. 9 in Ottawa. The Sobey Art Award exhibition continues at the National Gallery of Canada through April 6, 2025.