aria Legault is an emerging performance artist who lives and works in Toronto Canada. She holds a BFA from Concordia University and a MFA from the University of Guelph.
Legault is enamored with the futile moments in life and presents this in a saccharine sweet manner. For example, one of Legault's works, "Free Sugar" is an on-going project in which Legault draws attention to the holes in people's lives by pretending to repair them with pink icing. As well, in a symbolic effort to express the futility of finding the ideal mate Legault constructed a life sized male puppet named Plus One and married him. They traveled on an extended honeymoon, faced an ever increasing dissatisfaction with their relationship and Plus One was left on a shelf.
Legault has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. She has received numerous grants from the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Legault was honored with the Best Emerging Artist Award in Toronto, Canada.
Maria Legault and Geoffrey Pugen Marie-Minou Miaouw Miaouw - French Kiss 2006
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Art Interview: How would you describe yourself?
Maria Legault: I am a French-Canadian performance artist living in Toronto and working in whatever medium best expresses the ideas I am exploring at the time. My work tends to be both psychological and sociological.
Art Interview: What type of background do you come from?
Maria Legault: I was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1974 and I lived there for eight years until my family moved to the countryside in Quebec. Both of my parents work as psychotherapists. My mother specializes in marital psychotherapy and my father teaches human resources management courses.
Art Interview: Have your parents career choices had an influence on your art?
Maria Legault: Completely. Psychoanalysis and constant talk about psychological issues are always going on at our house. It has definitely affected how I think and work.
Art Interview: Did your parents encourage you to become an artist?
Maria Legault: They always encouraged my creativity but it has been hard on them. My art focuses on performance and installation and because of this financial instability will probably be a lifelong challenge. My parents have always been supportive given that I got married to a puppet and roll around in bred crumbs for my job.
Art Interview: What type of education did you receive?
Maria Legault Closer 2002
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Maria Legault: I went to Concordia University in Montreal where I completed a BFA in studio arts. Concordia was an obvious choice for me because it has a great reputation in the arts. I took fiber classes and did a lot of painting at Concordia under the tutorage of Guido Molinari. He was a huge mentor for me and he had a major influence on my choosing to pursue a career in the arts.
Afterward I entered the MFA program at the University of Guelph where I had received a scholarship and a teaching assistantship. I had applied with textile-based sculptures but in the end I was making performance videos there. This evolution progressed naturally for me. While I was creating textile pieces I realized that the gestures I made during creation had symbolism. That led me to be more interested in the process of making work than the actual finished product. So, I decided to show this process to the audience instead of presenting a finished product. That is how I began working in performance.
Art Interview: Which professors had the most influence on you at the University of Guelph?
Maria Legault: There were a lot of people there who influenced me in different ways. Susan Douglas is great as an art historian and cultural theorist. She gave me a sense of what I should read. Lee Rodney also gave me a lot of good reading material including the works of Julia Kristeva who wrote about abjection and the boundaries of the body. The performance-based photography work of Suzy Lake also really inspired me. But I suppose the person who influenced me the most there was Margaret Priest. She taught me so much about how to vocalize my practice and make a career out of being an artist. One of our assignments was to write a fake grant application. So I learned a bit about the business side of art and it taught me that researching different grants, writing grant proposals and constantly applying for them is part of my job as an artist. So, I started applying for grants when I finished graduate school. This year I was very lucky because I was awarded grants from the juries of the 3 funding bodies I applied to: The Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Art Festival. A rare but fun moment!
Art Interview: Is that how you began exhibiting as a professional artist?
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This oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Maria Legault on May 20, 2009. The interview took place over the telephone between Berlin, Germany and Toronto, Canada and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine.
aria Legault is an emerging performance artist who lives and works in Toronto Canada. She holds a BFA from Concordia University and a MFA from the University of Guelph.
