Friction
Amélie Laurence Fortin
Residency
February 5th to 22nd, 2026
In winter, Quebec’s landscape is transformed by the effects of bitter cold, which compresses the air, stiffens surfaces, and demands constant endurance from our bodies. The ground cracks, structures respond to the cold, and the pressure of the climate shapes both the landscape and our movements. Amélie Laurence Fortin’s work is part of this experience of tension and resistance: a set of chains slide and rub tirelessly against the surface of a metal monolith, engaging us in a sensitive confrontation with a perpetual movement that persists. Contrasting the mechanical movement of shiny chains with the immobile mass of a steel block, the installation deploys a live polyphonic sound composition that, through its movements, generates sounds that transform and change throughout the exhibition.
While the metal block may resemble a monument, it is the mechanism that activates it and the friction between the metals that evokes notions of constraint, tension, and duration. This pressure is applied not only to the materials of the installation, but also to our bodies. The frequencies and noises emitted by the movements of the chains engage our senses in multiple ways, transforming our relationship with the object and the space.
Thus, Friction calls for a form of psychological and physical endurance—the same that the artist observes both in Canada and in Poland, where she shares her artistic life. “My work is often influenced by territory, and currently by the political tension of borders.” In this way, Fortin’s sculptural, kinetic, and sonic work functions as a radical performative object, allowing for a reflection on matter, territory, and time: those experienced and those evoked.
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Comissionned by Avatar, artist-run center for audio and electronic arts
Produced in collaboration with the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Manif d’Art
The artist would like to thank: Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Jean-François Lahos, Louis-Robert Bouchard, Klaudiusz Ślusarczyk et Wojciech Sikora.
Amélie Laurence Fortin
Interdisciplinary artist, programmer and author Amélie Laurence Fortin lives and works between Canada and Poland. Through her installations, sculptures and sound works, she creates futuristic narratives in which objects bear witness to past or future actions. Her latest projects are an opportunity to question current technological upheavals through a radical, monumental and performative formal approach. Where opaque feminist fictional narratives and the ambiguity between the technical and the magical create the emergence of the random.
A selection of her recent exhibitions and research residencies includes: Radio28 CS (Mexico), Sporobole (Canada), Express Newark (USA), Tallin Art Hall (Estonia), Darling Foundry (Canada); KIKK Festival (Belgium), BWA galeria studio (Poland), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin); Manif d’Art Biennale (Canada), The Artic Circle (Norway), Avatar Center (Canada), Enia Gallery (Greece), as well as several local and international fairs.
Amélie Laurence Fortin moved to Berlin for the occasion of a national competition, granting her a one-year residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (2020) and then relocated to Warsaw (2021). She was shortlisted for the Prix Videre in 2020; and is the winner of the Prix René-Richard and Prix ADFU (2011); Prix Louis-Garneau and Prix Tomber dans l’Oeil (2003). Her work has been reviewed in Szum Magazine, BLOK Magazine, BerlinArtLink, BE Magazine, EFSYN Magazine, Esse Art+Opinion, Espace Magazine, Ciel Variable among others. Fortin earned a BFA in visual art (Université Laval 2004). She then trained as a self-taught adventurer in Canada and USA, taking part in numerous expeditions in ocean kayaking in both Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, while becoming actively taking parts in art residencies and exhibition in Canada and in Europe. Fortin holds a master’s degree in sculpture (Université Laval, 2011).
