
Galerie Galerie: these women were making digital art before digital art was cool
Interview with Galerie Galerie’s three co-founders: Gabrielle Bernatchez, Marie-Charlotte Castonguay-Harvey and Sophie Latouche.
How can we understand and accept this new normal? Through digital art! A discussion with some of Quebec’s pioneers in this field: the co-directors of Galerie Galerie.
COVID-19 has devastated the art community worldwide. Social distancing measures have forced theaters, concert halls and art galleries to close. Touring musicians canceled concerts, book launches were postponed and film productions were halted. As a result, many artists who were already in precarious situations found themselves even worse off.
Since March 12, 2020, art has been more digital than ever. American children’s book illustrator, Carson Ellis, has created a quarantine art club on Instagram, the first virtual design festival has taken place, many museums allow virtual tours of their collections, musicians from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra have used technology to record a virtual performance of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy from their homes. And the audience follows!
It’s as if we’ve become confined and aware of the importance of art in our lives. But this art is no longer physical, it has become virtual, and its effect is the same. It helps people cope with dark times. It becomes central to our lives. It connects us to a new normal and allows us to mourn the past. Virtual art IS art.
The birth of Galerie Galerie
In 2016, Gabrielle Bernatchez, Marie-Charlotte Castonguay-Harvey and Sophie Latouche created Galerie, an online platform for web and digital art. It’s not just a website featuring images of artwork. No, at Galerie Galerie, immersion is total. You live art. You are art. Throughout the year, OSB presents a series of exhibitions and curated projects, both online and offline. They also offer web art hosting and are involved in digital art sales. Having trouble understanding what we’re talking about? No wonder. It’s not a widespread concept. Galerie Galerie is Quebec’s first and only truly digital art platform.
Sophie Latouche tells me how the project came about. The young woman studied digital visual arts at Concordia. When she finished her degree, she wondered what opportunities there were for digital artists. They were very limited at the time. That’s when her high school friend Gabrielle came along. An HTML and CSS enthusiast since the age of 12, she holds a DEC in multimedia integration. At the time, she was beginning to lose interest in creating corporate websites. She was the perfect ally to take charge of the Galerie Galerie platform. Finally comes Marie-Charlotte. With a certificate in Political Science from Université Laval and a bachelor’s degree in Art History from Université du Québec à Montréal, she came to structure Galerie Galerie’s texts and vision.
Over the past month or so, the three co-founders have seen an unprecedented interest in digital art on the part of the general public, thanks to containment, of course, but also because we’re lucky enough in 2020 to have a solid Internet network and sufficiently mature content platforms (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook). The three women are very excited to see so much interest in digital art and their work. Donations to artists via the Patreon platform have exploded in recent weeks.
Restoration of a digital work
On Monday April 27, the platform unveiled the restoration of the web work “A White Institution’s Guide for Welcoming People Of Color And Their Audiences” by artist Fannie Sosa. The work takes the form of a guide addressing the supportive roles white institutions have a duty to develop when welcoming people and artists of color.
Offline since 2018, the guide has been used by over 200 cultural institutions worldwide to improve their equity practices. The restoration will create a renewed version of the work. An abridged version will be available free of charge on the Galerie Galerie platform, while the full version of the guide will be available as a paid PDF on request, with all proceeds going directly to the artist.
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