Grand-Métis, September 8, 2022 - Ms. Lise Gagné and Mr. Alexander Reford, respectively Chair of the Board of Directors and Executive Director of the International Garden Festival of the Reford Gardens, are very pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Ève De Garie-Lamanque to the position of Artistic Director of the Festival, which will be in its 24th edition next year.
With her extensive experience and guided by the mission and vision of the organization, her main mandate will be to promote and recognize the International Garden Festival as a place of experimentation in visual arts, architecture, design, landscape architecture, urbanism and the environment. As a member of the Festival's management board, she will be responsible for articulating the artistic visions of the Festival and of the Maison d'Ariane, the artists' residence of Métis-sur-Mer, in order to consolidate and propel the leadership of the Festival, where audacity, creativity and dialogue meet.
Ève De Garie-Lamanque holds a Master's degree in Canadian Art History from Concordia University (2008) and has been curator of contemporary art at the Musée régional de Rimouski since 2013. Her current research focuses on phenomenology, the aesthetics of the trace, Thing Theory and Material Culture Theories. She has a passion for fine crafts as well as for astrophysics, cosmology and astronomy.
Over the past twelve years, she has curated nearly thirty monographic, group and travelling exhibitions, published her writings and presented several conferences, most recently at the Biennale de sculpture de Saint-Jean-Port-Joli and the 10th Rencontre photographique du Kamouraska. Currently vice-president of the board of directors of the Centre d'artistes Caravansérail (Rimouski) and regional expert in the integration of art with architecture and the environment (MCCQ - Bas-Saint-Laurent), she has sat on a number of university, regional, provincial and national committees and juries as a specialist.
"A long-time collaborator of the Gardens, Ève De Garie-Lamanque is a driving force in the cultural milieu of the region. We are very excited to welcome her to the Festival team. Thanks to her experience in the design and mounting of exhibitions, her talents as a popularizer of content, her extensive knowledge of current art in Quebec, and her network of contacts in the visual arts community, the Festival will be able to count on someone who will expand its reach and programming, and establish very promising avenues of exploration," said Alexander Reford, Executive Director.