Portrait by Gabriel Neamtu, courtesy of Croyds Gallery
Email : contact@pascalejeanstudio.com
Artist Statement
Pascale Jean (b. 1999) is a French-Canadian artist living between Montréal and the Canadian Taiga. Her practice explores the complex relationship between human and non-human life, shaped by her childhood in the boreal forest and her observations of the resilient lives that persist within urban environments. Working across oil painting and papier-mâché sculpture, she stages fictional allegorical encounters where human, animal, and plant bodies become entangled, questioning the boundaries between coexistence, control, and belonging. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, Japan, France, and Mexico, and featured by Hyperallergic and CBC Arts.
Drawing from diaristic archives, Jean transforms personal memories into imagined hyperbolic narratives populated by insects, vegetation, and distorted bodies. Through grotesque domestic figuration, she examines the ways we classify, domesticate, protect, and reject the forms of life that surround us. Play is central to her practice: humour, absurdity, and tenderness become tools for suspending instinctive judgments and creating space for empathy.
Her compositions oscillate between attraction and unease. Hypersaturated colour, bodily distortion, and recurring insect motifs destabilize perception, while her material choices extend these questions into the physical language of the work. Recycled pulp papier-mâché sculptures mimic the preciousness of ceramics, challenging the values we assign to materials and organisms. In her paintings, distortion and excess replace idealized representations of nature and the body, creating figures that are simultaneously vulnerable, strange, and familiar. Rather than seeking to provoke discomfort, Jean uses the grotesque as a point of entry, inviting viewers to linger with what they might otherwise reject, allowing empathy to emerge only after sitting with their own unease.
Curriculum Vitae
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 Jeu d'Ego - Maison de la Culture Marie-Uguay - Montreal, Canada
2025 Cucas Vienen de Noche - Casa Lü Sur - Mexico City, Mexico
2024 Women, Mukade, and Little Deaths - Studio Kura Gallery - Itoshima, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan
2022 Critique sur l’Anthropocène - La Galerie d’Art du Cégep de Jonquière – Jonquière, Canada
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026 Echos – Aussenwelt.co – Montreal, Canada - for Montreal's Nuit Blanche
2025 Traces & Returns - JANO Gallery – Montreal, Canada
2025 Festival Hors Service - Ateliers 3333 – Montreal, Canada - for Canada’s Culture Days
2025 Foire Parallèle - Art fair, presented by Croyds Gallery – Montreal, Canada
2024 Soft Bodies, Hard Gaze (duo ) - Good Sport Gallery - London, Canada
2021 New and Noteworthy - Ho Tam Press – Vancouver, Canada
RESIDENCIES
2025 JANO Gallery - Montreal, Canada (6 months)
2025 Casa Lü Sur - Mexico City, Mexico (1 month)
2024 Aussenwelt.co at l'Union Française de Montréal - Montreal, Canada (3 months)
2024 Studio Kura - Itoshima, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan (1 month)
EDUCATION
2021 Bachelor of Fine Arts with excellent achievement distinction – Emily Carr University of Arts + Design - Vancouver, Canada
2020 International Exchange – Fine Arts – Tim Eitel Studio - École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts - Paris, France
2018 Diploma of College Studies (DEC) - Visual Arts - CEGEP de Jonquière
GRANTS & AWARDS
2024 Action Culturelle et Artistique - Awarded by LOJIQ for the Soft Bodies, Hard Gaze duo exhibition in London, Canada
2023 Action Culturelle et Artistique - Awarded by LOJIQ for the Studio Kura residency, in Itoshima, Japan
2020 Friends of Emily Carr
2019 Brissenden Scholarship
NOTABLE COLLECTIONS
2026 The Collection du Sud-Ouest of the City of Montreal - Montreal, Canada
2024 La Distillerie du Fjord - Saint-David-de-Falardeau, Canada
Private collections in Canada, Australia, France and Mexico
SELECTED PRESS
2025 Ryan Alexander Diduk for Niche Montreal, « The Immediate Data of Consciousness »
2025 Noémi Lincourt for Narcity
2025 Lea Collins for CBC Arts, " June logo is a last ‘symbolic’ collab with the late artist, Preston Buffalo "
2025 Claire-Marine Beha, for Sous La Fibre " Être artiste sur les réseaux sociaux : comment concilier création et promotion? "
2024 Abstract State - November Publication
2024 Grace Qiu for Verdant Journal - Spring-Summer 24
2024 Lakshmi Rivera Amin for Hyperallergic " A View From the Easel "
2024 Suboart Magazine Nr23 - p.124-125
2018 DUSFRENE, Jacques for Ici Radio-Canada – Boulevard du Pacifique
COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS
2025 CBC Art – June Logo 2025 - Toronto, Canada
2024 Artch & Céline Bureau – Art Critique – Montreal, Canada
2020 Eitel Studio at L'ENSBA – Confinement Solidaire charity auction for ADSF – Paris, France
SELECTED TALKS & JURY
2026 Maison de la Culture Marie-Uguay - Jury member - Montreal, Canada
2026 Arsenal Contemporary Art - In Conversation with Maskull Lasserre - Montreal, Canada
2024 Studio Kura – Artist Speaker – Itoshima, Japan
2022 Cégep de Jonquière – Artist Speaker – Jonquière, Canada
2021 Cégep de Jonquière – Artist Speaker – Jonquière, Canada