The work of Marjolaine Bourdua mainly revolves around the appropriation of elements of pop culture written in the way of a self-fiction. In these scenarios, the artist uses herself as a symptom of the tensed link between fascination and critic distance of pop culture and the icons she plays. Bourdua creates environments, inspired by her great interest in literature, which she stages as experiments. Whether it be in the form of installation art, sound pieces, radio broadcasts, performances or curatorial work, she sets in place a universe that tends to shift from one state to another. Sometimes the set-up falls apart. It then produces a sort of shrinkage between the fictional world and its anchor to reality. For example, songs are often used for their scenic effect and the splitting it can create. Bourdua has, in fact, an interest for the process of identification and the inherent seduction rapport of this video-clip and karaoke culture. So, the pop universe becomes, like music and lyrics, this area of mental projection, in which she tries to manipulate both the collective and individual memories in order to move its perception. Between the real and the fake, the live and the pre-recorded, the simulation and what opposes it, she attempts to shift these elements of stereotypical nature into another level of reading. In this sentimental rapport devoid of inhibitions, the artist becomes an omnipresent character who lives in her practice. The latter evolves around the contexts and states of the objects presented and are in the interest of a larger spectrum of writing and self-fiction.
Marjolaine Bourdua has Bachelor’s Degree from the School of Visual and Media Arts of UQAM as well as a Degree of higher studies of the Villa Arson in Nice. She has exhibited her work in France and in Quebec in the forms of audio broadcasts, performances and group show (Le Dojo, Radio Grenouille, Euphonia, Galerie de l’Ancien Collège des Jésuites in Reims, the Amherst Art Centre, Galerie Verticale, Maison des arts de Laval, Praxis art actuel, etc.) Active and engaged in the cultural milieu, (dans le milieu de l’art) she participated in the expansion of the projet Complot: théorie et création in 2006. Since 2004, she is also a member of the board of the Galerie Verticale. She currently resides in Montreal where she pursues her research around visual and sonar components of pop culture.