Dominique Blain lives and works in Montreal. Since the early 1980s, she has been developing a body of work using images that testify to social, political and economic histories of the past hundred years, pulled from documentary evidence because of their continuing resonance with contemporary perspectives. Armed with a degree in fine arts from Montreal’s Concordia University and an apprenticeship in cinema from the New York Film Academy, the young artist first made her mark with pieces such as Stars and Stripes (1985), Untitled (1987) and Missa (1992), which established her on the national and international scenes.

Over the years, her work began to investigate troubling global topics, as if seeking as many ways as possible to envisage the ambivalent ways humans grapple with colonialism, social injustice and the ravages of destruction. Impressively staged video installations, ambitious constructions accompanied by photographs or more modestly presented concept-objects, the works amplify the gap between the real and its representation, placing past and present in tension and confronting the viewer with the close-to-home and the faraway. In this way the artist uncovers the fate of artworks during wartime, for instance, drawing our attention to the necessity to protect them, from the Buddhas of the Bamiyan valley (Bamiyan, 2013) to rescue operations of the First and Second World Wars (Monuments, 1998 and Monuments II, 2019). Elsewhere, she focuses on the inhuman treatment of migrant populations (Dérive, 2019), or collects images of uprisings related to injustice, political prisoners, the treatment of women and freedom of expression from around the world (Émergence, 2015)

Dominique Blain’s practice not only involves the creation of public artworks, but also includes set design for theatre (Lysis, 2021-2022, Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, Montreal) and opera (L’Orangeraie, 2021-2022 and The Trials of Patricia Isasa, 2016, Chants Libres, Montréal). Her achievements have been recognised with various honours, notably the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas, awarded by the Quebec government, and the Prix-hommage des Artistes pour la Paix, both in 2014. She has exhibited in numerous North American and European cities, including the Portland Museum of Art, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the LACMA in Los Angeles, the Kunstverein in Frankfurt, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen. Three major retrospectives of her work have taken place: at the Arnolfini Centre for Contemporary Art in Bristol (1997-1998), the Musée National des Beaux-Arts in Quebec (1998), and the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montreal (2004). Pieces by her are held in the collections of a number of museum institutions, including the MBAC in Ottawa, the AGO in Toronto, the UQAM Galley, the MACM and the MBAM, all three in Montreal, the MNBAQ in Quebec, as well as the LACMA in Los Angeles, the MAMAC in Nice and the Musée de l’Europe in Brussels.