Lys-Ange LeBlanc experience
Written by
Lys-Ange LeBlanc
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My name is Lys-Ange LeBlanc and I am a french-Canadian multidisciplinary artist currently based in Rovaniemi, Finland since 2012. Biggest city of Lapland, but with only 50 000 people and a home of Santa Claus. I often meet Santa, but my art practice has nothing to do with him or all the reindeers you can see everywhere.
My main artistic inspiration in the Arctic Circle is about the freedom, space, light; where there is more trees than people, lakes and time to float around. The city where I live is like an island and a transitory place where all possibilities are open.
This fall I have applied to participate in Berlin-Session 2014, as an artist-coordinator because I felt it was important for me to see something refreshing and inspiring outside Lapland area. During my stay in Berlin, I had the opportunity to have a cultural guide, Andrzej Raszyk, who showed me around for three weeks and presented me key people in my field. We visited artist studios, went to artist talks, exhibitions, walked around town together, philosophized and laughed a lot.
For me, to go in the Berlin-Session was a way to get out of my comfort zone and explore this playground through my Nordic identity. To be in Berlin had a similar effect than picking berries in the forest, a sort of contemplation and an effort to make a cultural storage for the winter in company of transitory friends. It was an interesting for me to see such a rich and evolving cultural life that can absorb you into intriguing microcosm. I felt that Berlin reveals itself through people and their Berliner identity.
This experience in Berlin was stimulating and it changed my time zone. I would compare this tree weeks like polar dipping in the Arctic circle. At first it is overwhelming, you start adapting and at the end you like it.
See my personal website here
