“My work, Solidarité, was largely inspired by a well-known Canadian artist named Geneviève Cadieux. Geneviève Cadieux, a photographer and artist from Montreal, engages often with themes of vulnerability and creates interesting and captivating representations. I remember being fascinated with her exhibition outside the National Gallery of Canada, the long south façade. To get to school, I would pass this exhibition every day and I always wanted to learn more about the subject of these works. This exhibition entitled Barcelone engaged principally with the theme of solitude and represented the sentiment of isolation. Over the course of this past year, we have lived a life that is far from normal, and that was accompanied with many emotions like sadness, isolation, stress, and others. In my work, I wanted to share a space that allows me to escape reality and bring me to a place of serenity.”

—Chloé Desmarais (Grade 11, École secondaire publique De La Salle, Ottawa, Ontario)

Geneviève Cadieux (b.1955) is a contemporary Montreal-based photographer who is best known for her large-scale, often cinematic works. Barcelone is a series of nine large-scale photographs that together explore themes connected with distance and connection, exhibited on the south façade of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa in 2021.