Artistic statement
Aurélie Pedron seeks to contribute to the balance of individuals and societies by creating immersive installations that invite viewers to slow down. Challenging the subjective notion of “reality,” her works offer experiences of expanded states of consciousness, oscillating between meditative states, reconnection with the deeper self, disorientation in space and time, and hallucinatory sensations.
The artist has developed a distinctive expertise in bringing together teams from radically different backgrounds and social contexts, enriching the complexity of the works she co-creates with her collaborators. Through carefully orchestrated combinations of materials, she composes what she calls “system-works.” The materials involved are interdependent and set one another into motion in a constant search for balance, much like natural ecosystems. These materials often include the bodies of the audience themselves.
The body is central to her practice. It is the grounding site of the artistic experience. By placing the viewer’s body in carefully constructed spatial situations, Aurélie challenges what we take to be real, disrupting the rational mind and opening the way to expanded states of consciousness.
Aurélie embraces values that quietly inform her artistic processes without ever becoming overt demonstrations. Encounters with people whose lives have followed unconventional or traumatic paths, together with her commitment to studying under a Taoist master atop a mountain in China, have profoundly expanded her understanding of existence. These lived experiences shape the foundations of her creative process from within.
Aurélie Pedron
Aurélie Pedron founded her company Lilith & Cie in 2013, creating sites for her installation performances, where performers’ bodies transmit meaning and reveal invisible images. Presented by Tangente in 2014, ENTRE is a nanoperformance for one audience member at a time, and became the company’s masterwork, earning a Prix de la danse de Montréal, in the revelation category. In 2016, with Danse-Cité, Pedron created LA LOBA, a choreographic journey with 12 live installations in the former Deaf-Blind Institute building in Montréal. ANTICHAMBRE, an immersive work where movement is at the heart of the spectator’s experience, was presented at l’Agora de la danse in 2019. INVISIBLE, a 72-hour uninterrupted dance performance, was programmed in the 2021 OFFTA, coproduced with Montréal Danse and Danse-Cité.
In parallel, fed by a social and inclusive ethic, Aurélie Pedron collaborates with marginalized youth. She created the microperformances RÛE and MARGE (2014–2015) with them, supported by the Montréal-based multidisciplinary artist centre DARE-DARE. In 2016, INDEEP, was a 10-hour performance with 10 blindfolded youth offering a transformative and fascinating performance that confronted our gaze on a social body operating without landmarks and normative codes. DANS LE CŒUR DU HÉRON, initially programmed in the 2020 OFFTA, was created in collaboration with Simiuni Nauya, Inuit sculptor, and presented at the Musée d’art de Rouyn-Nouranda in 2021.
Lilith & Cie is supported by the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Arts Council.
Lilith in History
Her name’s diverse etymologies (Hebrew and Sumerian) relate to night and wind.
“Lilith, the night. Objectified figure of the unfulfilled, in other words, the unconscious that humanity would project into existence in the form of a feminine character throughout the ages, while, in fact, it resides within the night of its interiority.” Annick De Souzenelle
Under the auspices of this archetype, Lilith & Cie invites us to reclaim embodiment, perceive the untellable, and move beyond sensory understanding.