Drifting through Meaning

A Quebec City artist originally from São Paulo, Brazil, Giorgia Volpe earned her bachelor’s degree in art education before pursuing her master’s at Université Laval’s École d’art from 1998 to 2001. This journey led her to make her home in the city, where she has left her mark with works in situ that shape the urban landscapes where they are located. A multidisciplinary artist, Volpe developed a practice in performance and multimedia installation and began gaining recognition through the Coopérative Méduse, a hub for contemporary and experimental art. In 2008, she was one of approximately fifty artists from the capital invited by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) to take part in the exhibition C’est arrivé près de chez vous (It Happened in Your Neighbourhood), organized in honour of the city’s four hundredth anniversary. There, she presented La dérive (Drift), an installation that introduced the full-scale canoe motif that would become a recurrent theme of her work.

Volpe’s preparation period for the 2008 exhibition coincided with the end of a provincial election campaign, which left an abundance of corrugated polypropylene election signs scattered across the city. This is the material the artist recycled for La dérive. The canoe is made from strips cut from the plastic signs and woven together using a traditional basketry technique. It rests on an expansive surface made of the same material. “Highly relevant to the political climate of the time, the installation highlights the emptiness of the promises made by politicians who take us for a ride, while also evoking Quebec folklore, particularly the chasse-galerie. Humour intertwines with questions of political resistance and belonging.”

Volpe’s artistic approach showcases skills rooted in traditional knowledge—particularly those associated with textile arts, such as embroidery, weaving, and braiding—but it also reuses and transforms industrial materials into aesthetic objects. Often located in urban areas, these works also involve a process of exchange, whether it is with passersby, visitors, or neighbours.

Over the course of her career, Volpe has participated in over a hundred exhibitions, public interventions, and artist residencies in Brazil, Cuba, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Thailand, and other countries. Her works can be found in numerous public and private collections, including those of the MNBAQ, the Loto-Québec Collection, and the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art in Brazil.

This Spotlight is excerpted from Quebec City Art & Artists: An Illustrated History by Michèle Grandbois.