Born in Montréal, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in visual arts, Marie-France Brière lived in Italy and then earned a master’s degree in visual arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal (1989). She has been very active in public art since the early 1990s, and her work can be seen in numerous public buildings all over the island of Montréal, including at the Cinémathèque québécoise, the Société des arts technologiques, and the Palais de justice de Montréal.
Artwork description
Weighing more than fifteen tons and standing twenty feet high, this monumental work takes its inspiration from the landscape of stone quarries.
The artist relates the exposure of the layers of a quarry’s strata to the scientific investigations taking place on this campus. By inserting a reflective metal blade between the stones, new vantage points for exploring the carved surfaces are created, not unlike what is discovered through a microscope.