Zeljka Himbele:<\/strong> You\u2019re probably best known for your photographic body of work, but gradually you have been introducing video,<\/strong> drawing, painting, and ceramics. Using the properties of these different media comes to you very organically. How do you see your artistic development in that respect?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00c8ve K. Tremblay:<\/strong> My early photographic works (2000\u201307) were staged scenarios related to exploration of the psyche, the subconscious, and memory. They brought together my background in theatre, cinema, literature, and psychoanalysis, and my love of science. After 2007, I gradually started to work with other media as I was presented with art opportunities in Europe and the United States. My life became \u201cbohemian\u201d and ungrounded. At that time, I was living in Berlin, New York City, and Montr\u00e9al. Then, also because I suffered from a herniated disk, I started to explore the mind-body connections in life and in my art; I found lighter and simpler ways of creating my life and works. My handbag, smaller cameras, and Ray Bradbury\u2019s book Fahrenheit 451<\/em> became my mobile studio for a while. My adventures with clay, painting, and drawing came later, when I was a bit more grounded and needed more \u201chermit time\u201d; these media allow me to use my hands and my whole body and to engage more spontaneously with materials. In particular, my fascination with ceramics started in 2013, when I took a course at Greenwich House Pottery in New York City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZH:<\/strong> How would you describe your working method?<\/p>\n\n\n\n EKT<\/strong>: Early on, my works were generated through the intuitive process of translation<\/em> from readings to images, or via day dreams or night dreams. Nowadays, some figures I paint come from parts of my photographs. Others come from scientific images. Elements in my drawings, paintings, and ceramics bounce off each other. Usually, I work on many pieces at once. Making my ceramic pieces involves many steps, from hand-building porcelain or white stoneware to drawing with underglaze pencils, transferring laser prints of photographs, multiple firings, and adding layers of glazes. I am always trying to challenge myself, learn from the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZH:<\/strong> Recently, some of your photographic images have been appropriated vintage photos that become enclosed in ceramics. Occasionally, your photographs take various organic shapes or are printed on textiles. At times, instead of being formally framed, photographic prints are hung directly from walls or ceilings. What does this \u201cstepping outside\u201d of photographic conventions mean to you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n EKT <\/strong> It is a way to organize exhibition spaces as a stream-of-consciousness experience, offering the viewers many readings and formal connections. Prints on fabric feel as evanescent as our realities. Some are inspired by the sailboats I see on Lake Champlain, offering an alternative to the surprisingly high number of flags I noticed in the United States. Water as presence of renewal and metamorphosis has been a recurring motif in my work. Light refracted through water or moving through melting ice fascinates me. Ephemeral installations and photographs created on the shores of Lake Champlain evoke journeys or lost stories. In the winter of 2024, I started making free-form coloured embroideries on printed fabric. They are a bit like drawing and painting, but they also create a new three-dimensional surface for luminous reflections. Another mobile studio set-up: I can carry them with me between New York and Montr\u00e9al and even work on them during train rides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZH:<\/strong> Drawing is often described as a very intuitive medium. For the drawing series Stratipodes ReCollection <\/em>from 2019, the main inspiration came from the Champlain Sea, a part of the Atlantic Ocean that in the last glacial period covered parts of your native Qu\u00e9bec, as well as Ontario, Vermont, and areas of upstate New York. One segment of the exhibition at the Strand Center for the Arts featured small-size colour drawings. Could you give us a few hints on how to read them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n EKT:<\/strong> Part of my personal geography, the drawings are a bit like maps with personal notes on them, as well as scientific curiosities. They feature abstract elements and surreal aspects. Their colours emphasize the subjective nature of things filtered by the mind. These mindscapes become a way to try and see myself from above. However improbable this act is, it offers a soft distancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZH:<\/strong> I would say that the topic of human time vs. geological time and the shifts from macro to micro, both present in Stratipodes ReCollection,<\/em> can also be seen in your paintings and ceramics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n EKT:<\/strong> Paintings, drawings, and ceramics help me merge the invisible with the visible, juxtaposing the micro and macro worlds and different layers of realities. The sculptural tableaus Stratipodes ReCollection <\/em>and La mer Champlain (before the US\u2013Canada border even existed)<\/em> allow me to reflect on the layers of geological time at the border, from the Champlain Sea to Lake Champlain and the formation of Leda clay, to the past and present migrations of people. In 2018 and 2019, a period I now call my \u201cNYC detox,\u201d I created many photographs during solitary walks, carrying my ceramics shapes in my pockets or a handbag, staging them on the shores of Lake Champlain, improvising with light and the landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ZH <\/strong> The metaphoric layering of motifs and techniques in your most recent works can be approached as presenting layers of history and memory. In your exhibition at the Strand Center for the Arts, for the first time you presented a large body of ceramic works. They incorporated organic abstract shapes, archival photographic images, and drawings embedded in ceramic objects. Histories and memories, personal and collective, are constant motifs in your practice. How would you describe the meaning of memory and history to you, and their continuous presence in your works?<\/p>\n\n\n\n EKT:<\/strong> I always had a thing for mnemonic images related to my personal history. The painting Happy Corona Hour with Neighbors, <\/em>for example, came from an iPhone photograph I took during the early months of the pandemic, when we would meet outdoors at 5 p.m. with our next-door neighbours. Those were shared moments that felt both psychedelic and joyful. First, I made a sketch from the photograph. Textile leftovers from all the protective masks I made at the time also infiltrated the painting. I stuck one piece of a mask into the acrylic, almost as a talisman. Additionally, the four-by-six-inch print of this iPhone photograph got smeared by my defective printer. I found the accident quite interesting, so I scanned the smudged photograph and made an edition of it printed on silk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00catre sous les flocons (To be under snowflakes)<\/em>, is another painting I started during the early months of the pandemic. It was finalized in 2023, when I put it on the floor and added glued ceramics that echoed some of my previous ceramic pieces to which I fuse images using photo transfers; I call them \u201cphoto pebbles.\u201d They were fired with historical archival images of unknown women that I found in local archives. But I knew that many of these women were possibly Qu\u00e9bec emigrants who, from the mid-nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century, moved south in great numbers. Many people in upstate New York are of Qu\u00e9bec origin. Recently, I realized that I really needed to be back in Montr\u00e9al, at least as a part-time resident, in order not to lose my culture, as some of those women may have. Somehow, my love of photography and portraiture seemed to be woken up by this realization.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n ZH:<\/strong> There are many fictional influences in your work. Could you mention writings that are of particular importance to you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n EKT:<\/strong> Early on I was fond of the Nouveau Roman genre, exploring unconventional ways to narrate (Nathalie Sarraute), and stream of consciousness in literature (Virginia Woolf). It all ended up influencing my visual practice. When people ask me to explain the art that I do, I often find myself answering that I am working a bit like a writer but with images and objects. Over time, my works have become like memory palaces, through which I can wander in my mind to find geographies, people, books, and ideas that have crossed my life.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"Eve-K-tremblay\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/112_CHR_Himbele_Eve-K-tremblay_Fleursdarchives_2023-scaled.jpg\")
Fleurs d’archives<\/em>, exhibition view, Strand Center for the Arts, Plattsburgh, 2023.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Eve-K-tremblay\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/112_CHR_Himbele_eve-K-Tremblay_Bulbemarieauxfleurs_2023.jpg\")
Bulbe mari\u00e9 aux fleurs<\/em>, 2023.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Eve-K-tremblay\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/112_CHR_Himbele_Eve-K-tremblay_Bacteriesangeliquessurroche_2017-scaled.jpg\")
Bact\u00e9ries ang\u00e9liques sur roche<\/em>, 2017.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Eve-K-tremblay\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/112_CHR_Himbele_Eve-K-Tremblay_DSC0772.jpg\")
Fleurs d\u2019archives<\/em>, exhibition view, Strand Center for the Arts, Plattsburgh, 2023.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n