Collection: Mathilde Bois

Mathilde Bois lives and works between Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang and Saint-Ferréol-les-Neiges. Her work focuses on children games, interspecies relationships and the many tools—both real and symbolic—through which humans domesticate their environment. Deeply attached to the image, she tells stories through watercolor, painting, textile, and photography. 

After studying art history and completing a master’s degree in philosophy, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Concordia University in 2025. Her works have been exhibited in Quebec and Germany, notably in solo exhibitions at Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay (Montreal) and Manif d’art (Québec). A finalist for the Albert-Dumouchel Prize, she has also received several grants and awards, including the Alfred Pinsky Medal and the Yves Gaucher Prize. Alongside her practice, she teaches arts to high school students and works in cultural mediation with various communities.

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Mathilde Bois questions the place humans have arrogated to themselves among other animals and the real and symbolic tools through which they control their environment. Through painting, watercolor, and textile, she highlights the oppressive nature of various animal representations—whether cute, moralizing, or scientific.

Her practice is rooted in drawing, which serves as a space of freedom and play where narratives begin. These poetic or whimsical images become starting points for works permeated by a diversity of cultural references. To create her works, she draws from historical representations of nature that distort the real natural world: classical zoological illustrations, children’s toys, and contemporary cartoons. Built on the principle of collage, her images are traversed by anachronisms and stylistic tensions that verge on the grotesque or absurd. The result is a staging where the artificial and natural contaminate each other, echoing current ecological catastrophes.

This process allows her to construct fables and allegories in which animals act as narrators. Presented in setups reminiscent of the Victorian era (illustrated fables, dioramas, tabletop games, etc.), her works propose an inverted world where animals offer a distorted, sad, and parodic reflection of human arrogance and impulses of control. Humor and empathy become ways of contemplating animal subjectivity and resistance.