Marie LeBlanc is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist. Through photography, multimedia projection, short film, performance and wordsmithing she explores themes related to landscape, isolation, beauty, health and nature. Capturing faces, shapes, shadows and reflections with digital and on-camera effects, often superimposing her own reflection, she seeks to embrace the present moment and the ethereal world around her.
Originally from Northern Manitoba, she lived in Winnipeg before recently relocating to Alberta. In the winter months, she travels to the U.S. desert in a cargo van adapted for safe housing to ease the symptoms of Environmental Illness (referred to as Environmental Sensitivities in Canada). Because the illness remains an unrecognizable and misunderstood diagnosis, her work intends to self-advocate and bring awareness to the related struggles faced by so many. LeBlanc’s most important awareness project to date, WHO says we need fresh air?! has travelled throughout Manitoba, to Edmonton, Jasper and Arizona. Quotes from individuals across the globe afflicted by Environmental Illness are projected onto buildings, structures, billboards, screens and monitors.
LeBlanc holds a Bachelor of Arts in Human Geography and Sociology from the University of Manitoba. She has participated in the Making Our Mark II Printmaking Mentorship Program at Martha Street Studio, the Artist In Residency Program at Artbeat Studio and the Art Salon Program at Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba (AANM). Her story and artwork have been featured in interviews and articles throughout Western Canada, in Quartzsite (Arizona) and with MCS Aware (UK). She was recently awarded Microgrants from Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art and AANM for the completion of Overdressed.
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