Cynthia Girard-Renard conjures up a multifaceted world in which the environment, political activism, identity issues and a colourful imaginary come together by way of painting, sculpture, installation, poetry and performance. Girard-Renard's thematic free associations open up spaces of poetic reflections where humour and urgency intertwine for a fleeting instant. She touches on various subjects, such as the planet's ecological future, the precariousness of national or gender identities, the absurdity of austerity measures, among others. Girard-Renard thus mobilizes satire and poetry to play on everyday hierarchies by imagining timeless worlds in which animals, unicorns and great historical figures meet in imaginary settings to discuss the future, utopia and freedom.

Cynthia Girard-Renard is a visual artist and a poet. Major solo exhibitions of her work have been organized at Fonderie Darling (2021), Musée d’art de Joliette (2017), the Uma Certa Falta de Coerencia, Porto, Portugal (2015), Esker Foundation, Calgary, Alberta (2014), and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2005). The artist has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec to partake in artist residencies in Paris, London, New York and Berlin. In 2018 she was the recipient of the Prix-Louis-Comtois awarded to a mid-career artist, as well as the Takao Tanabe Painting Prize given by the National Gallery of Canada. She is currently an associate professor at Concordia University. Her dog and muse, named Satan, is her sidekick in almost all her adventurers.