Beau Grand Bateau
Beau Grand Bateau is a multimedia work combining silkscreen printing, sculpture, and performance to examine multidimensional identity and the complexities it entails. For this piece, I portaged a canoe to the Saint-Laurent River in an attempt to sail it, using the action as a way to explore belonging.

The open-skin boat merges material and cultural narratives. Inspired by the umiak of coastal Nunavik, it is built from PVC ribs and spine, and covered with a patchwork quilt — a folkloric Québécois courtepointe — incorporating bazin, pagne wax, and counterfeit luxury brand fabrics printed via silkscreen. These textiles, rooted in West and Central African traditions yet produced globally, speak to cultural hybridization. The boat becomes a metaphor for the hybrid body — like myself, a multidimensional subject embodying multiculturalism.

The title references Gerry Boulet’s song Un Beau Grand Bateau, tied to the French expression mener en bateau (“to lead someone on”). As in the song, the work carries themes of deception: belonging is illusory, and the hybrids — the boat and I — are adrift in a no man’s land.

Through its sculptural and performative dimensions, Beau Grand Bateau questions identity’s relationship to society and proposes cultural dialogue beyond binaries.