Maude Arsenault's path has been shaped by her life as a mother-photographer, and a career that has led her to examine and question the female body and the spaces that physically, psychologically and socially characterize it. Challenging the power and performance structures that govern the conditions of female representation is central to her practice. By way of the photographic prism and a practice that alternates between abstract compositions, materiality, portraits and documentary images, she examines the representation of women in public and private spaces, as well as notions of the body as territory. Her photography and installation works consist of prints on fragile paper, delicate textiles and structures to be constructed or deconstructed. Through her work, Maude seeks to question the various forms of representing feminine identities that are current in our modern, virtual world, and to better decode what acts on the appropriation of an identity free of dominant structures. In this way, she aims to reveal something vital in the relationship between an individual and his or her environment, and the ebb and flow between interiority and lived space.
Arsenault published the photographic book Entangled in 2020 and will launch Resurfacing in 2023, a second book to be published by the Los Angeles-based Deadbeat Club press. The winner of the prestigious 2020 Hariban Photography Grand Prize (Japan), she holds a certificate in art history from UDM and a MFA from UQAM. Maude is the recipient of the 2023 Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art, and the 2021 Yvonne L. Bombardier Visual Arts Scholarship.