Laïla Mestari was born in Casablanca, Morocco, and now lives in Montreal. Mainly rooted in collage, her artistic practice is driven by a continuous dialogue between the visual arts and the living arts. Her auto-ethnographic research explores the aesthetic and kinaesthetic paradoxes inherent in the feelings of territorial belonging that are specific to contemporary diasporas. She has received several grants (Canada Council for the Arts, Irene F. Whittome Prize in Studio Arts, Prix Ada Lovelace) and she holds an MFA from Concordia University (2017). Her work has notably been acquired by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and has recently been displayed in two solo exhibitions in Canada (La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse and VU, 2019), as well as at Rota in Spain (Espacio PINEA, 2017). She's currently presenting a solo project at LOBE (Chicoutimi). Mestari has participated in several multidisciplinary projects and group exhibitions presented in Montreal (SKOL, Dazibao, Monument-National, Arprim, Musée des Maîtres et Artisans du Québec, to name but these). Mestari's recent work reflects on the role of painting and photography canons in the justification of colonial thought. The relationship between the human figure and landscape is ubiquitous here. The idealization and subjection of the body of racialized women are questioned in a performative relation between the artist's body, organic or plastic material and the printed image.