Biography and approach
Lise-Hélène Larin (BFA Concordia University 1976, MFA Université du Québec à Montréal 1988, PhD Université du Québec à Montréal 2011) teaches drawing at Concordia University since 1984. She also taught at Dawson College for many years. Early in her career, she did 2D animation at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and for the French TV Network of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for which she received many prizes.
The forest is Lise Helene Larin’s territory and site of research.
“The forest is Lise Helene Larin’s territory and site of research" says Victoria Leblanc. It is the touchstone and organizing metaphor of her multidisciplinary oeuvre. Through a sensorially engaged and collective praxis over the last four decades, Larin has retrieved the forest in the heart of the city by using La Presse and The Gazette combining them with rubber bands to create her trees. Her process is unorthodox, rhizomatic and haptic. She is simultaneously artist, activist and pedagogue.
Larin’s forest is subject to time; thus, unlike traditional artworks, her forest weakens, disintegrates. While her first major exhibition in Montreal’s Elysee Theatre (1988) represented a celebratory engagement of over 2000 people, her latest iteration (2020) represents a moving lament.” This new action on the environment was renewed in the light of Timothy Morton’s concept of the Anthropocene. Ironically, she used Le Devoir this time as if to show that our duty had not been accomplished yet. In 2021, she produced a catalogue about this important exhibition. http://www.lisehelenelarin.com
She then ventured into technology when doing her PhD. Her non-figurative 3D animated films question sculpture, painting, photography as well as 3D animation itself. From 2002 to 2019, her 3D work was selected three times at Siggraph and was part of a travelling show all over Europe and the United States. She showed her films at the Sony Centre in Berlin and in Belgium. She also received a prize of excellence for her research in 3D animation. https://lhl777.wixsite.com/lisehelenelarin
In May 2023 she showed Espèce en voie d’apparition/Emerging Species, a series of color drawings started during the pandemic at Galerie Produit rien in Montreal and still being developed to this day with a new generation, experimenting with AI. It was shown at Galerie Erga in Montreal in March 2025. Each of those two shows involves small sculptures. In the first at Galerie Produit rien, they were my Flying devices – prototypes, 2023 – in the second, at Galerie Erga, the sculptures are the result of my experimenting with AI. They are my Brainy Brood, numbers 1 to 13, 2025
