The films of Sylvie Laliberté

Born in Montréal, Sylvie Laliberté has been a performance artist since 1985, and an important figure on the Canadian performance art scene. Her work, which integrates singing, dance, and story-telling, has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her video works question the frame, gesture, body-camera relationship, self-representation, sense of space, fiction, and parody. Narrative, humour, and the role of the storyteller are essential components of her post-feminist and subjective videography. Links between the domestic environment and existential preoccupations are explored, while the electronic medium integrates the performative capacities of the subject. Laliberté's works are a testament to the fact that the critical dimension of feminism may be integrated without denying the specific nature of the creative process and allowing the presence of a conscious, active and imaginative individual. Her videotape Oh La La du narratif was awarded the 1998 Prize from the Quebec Association of Cinema Critics in the short and medium length category. Her videotape Bonbons Bijoux received the Prize from the Oberhausen Festival (Germany) the same year. Sylvie Laliberté received the Louis-Comtois Prize, awarded by the City of Montreal and the AGAC (Montreal Association of Galleries). Sylvie Laliberté also produces objects and engravings, marked with her sense of the oral and self-derision. Her first book, Je suis formidable mais cela ne dure jamais très longtemps was published at Les 400 coups, in 2007.