Elisabeth Belliveau
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Elisabeth Belliveau (born November 27, 1979) is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist and author of five graphic novels.[1] Currently based in Treaty Six Territory, Amiskwaciwâskahikan, Edmonton, Alberta, she is an assistant professor of fine arts at Grant MacEwan University Faculty of Fine Arts and Communications.[2][3] She previously taught at the Grande Prairie Regional College in Alberta, and at Concordia University in Montreal.[4]
Belliveau served on the board of directors for one of the province's largest and oldest centres for Canadian contemporary art, Latitude 53,[5] and is an advisory council member for Grant MacEwan University's John and Maggie Mitchell Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta.[6] Met with high approbation, Belliveau's works have been endorsed internationally by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts,[7] and the New York State Council on the Arts.[7] In Canada, her works have found the support of the Canadian Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.[7]
Belliveau was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia in 1979. In 2001, she obtained a BFA Honours in Sculpture at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Alberta. In 2009, after completion of her MFA in Fibres at Concordia University in Montréal, Quebec,[8] Belliveau was awarded the William Blair Bruce Scholarship.[4]
Career
Belliveau's current practice is focused primarily on the conventions of contemporary still life. In exploration of the genre through a "feminist lens,"[8] she compares the conditions that have, and have not, permitted women's participation - and subsequent recognition - within the world of the fine arts. In reflection of how "women [have] embedded their stories [into], and subverted [the] genre"[8] of still life, and in consideration of the many ways one's gender may influence their inclusion within cultural institutions and discourse historically, Belliveau presents an argument for women's contributions and innovations within the arts.[8]
Belliveau notes that she first became interested in still life, and the implications of the genre, while in attendance at a residency in which her residency mentor, August Klintberg, had banded together a group of artists all interested in the genre.[8] While at the Centre for the Arts in Banff, Alberta as an artist in residence, Belliveau further considered the implications of various sub-genres found commonly within the genre of still life, particularly that of the "breakfast still life."[8] In an interview for Edmonton, Alberta's SNAP Gallery, Belliveau shares that she was profoundly moved by the sub-genre's "depictions of the abundance and decadence and all the wasted food, after the party."[8] Often calling into question issues of equitable access, and in the artist's choosing to work within a range of both traditional and digital mediums, Belliveau's multidisciplinary practice often ventures further to "reimagine the boundaries of waste and aestheticism."[9]
Residencies
In 2002, Belliveau was awarded her first ever residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Alberta.[6] In the years following her attendance of the Banff Centre's "Beauty Thematic Residency," Belliveau would be granted a multitude of opportunities for artistic residency across Canada. Between 2002 and 2009, Belliveau would be chosen as the artist in residence in institutes spanning from the Canadian Yukon, at the Klondike Institute for Arts and Culture in Dawson City, in 2006,[6] to Canada's easternmost provinces, at the Struts Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick, in 2007,[6] and the Anchor Archive in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2009.[6]
In 2010, Belliveau would travel internationally for her first residency abroad, after being awarded attendance to the Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York.[6] Notably, between the years of 2016–2017, Belliveau was chosen as the artist in residence at the CALQ/Tokyo Wondersite in Japan, as awarded by the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres de Quebec.[4] In the years following, Belliveau would be awarded for further opportunity to study abroad, and was granted residency at both Studio Kura in Fukuoka, Japan,[6] and at Youkoba in Tokyo, Japan, both in 2018.[6]
