Sobey Art Award 2024: Mathieu Léger

Mario Doucette: Hello, Mathieu! We are in your studio in Moncton, and we’re surrounded by your works on paper and your installations. In one corner, there’s also a drum kit. Do you remember the first time you played the drums?
Mathieu Léger: My interest in percussion started when I was young.  I remember my mother’s uncle – he played in pop-music groups in the 1960s and 1970s. He had a drum kit and guitars at home. When we went to visit him, I was fascinated by his drums, and my brother loved his guitar. My father played guitar too. I took drumming lessons when I was twelve. A little later, I was in a few rock groups. We had our first concerts at our school and at community centres near the small Acadian community of Sainte-Marie-de-Kent, New Brunswick.

Mathieu Léger, Unda I (Legend Dark 26) (detail of performance), 2022–24, from the series Obstacles & Amendments. Performance archive, graphite on Fabriano paper, 46 × 61 cm. Collection of the artist. © Mathieu Léger Photo: Mathieu Léger

MD: Your love of music and drums is highlighted in the works in the Sobey Art Award exhibition. You’ve used your body and a drum kit to create works involving drawing, printmaking, video, performance and sound. What was your process?
ML: This work is the result of five years of thinking about the body. I do a lot of performance art, and the subtlety of body movements interests me. I want to know how the body moves choreographically, and even mechanically. I want to see if my body’s movements can leave traces, and if these accumulations of movements can become archives of lived experiences.
I began to think about everything I do in my daily life. Playing the drums is part of that. I practise drumming rudiments – like scales on a piano – every day in my studio. I wanted to create traces and artifacts using my drum kit as a drawing instrument. For example, I strike my drumsticks directly on paper, embossing it, to create works like Triple Four (2021). And I practise drumming rudiments on copper plates, which I etch and then print on paper, as in Rudimentary Culture #1 (2021). I also hang pencils from them or attach them to my drum kit to make scribbled drawings on paper like Unda I (Legend Dark 26) (2022–24). In all these series of actions, I’m using my rhythmic dexterity to produce visual works. The sound they make is secondary.

Mathieu Léger, Rudimentary Culture #1 (with copper plate), 2021, from the series Performing the Act That Makes the Mark, Which Makes the Sound. Performance archive, copperplate etching on Hahnemühle copperplate paper, 56 × 78 cm. Collection of the artist. © Mathieu Léger Photo: Mathieu Léger

MD: Beyond music, your works seem to have connections with genetics, biology, history and the notion of time.
ML: Yes. The relationship between my work and genetic biology comes from my connection to my ancestor Jacques Léger, known as Larosette; he was the first Léger settler to arrive from France, around 1680. He was a soldier-drummer, a military musician of ordinance music, at Fort Nashwaak – today Fredericton, New Brunswick. He was in charge of transmitting signals and setting the beat for marching troops with his drum rolls.I find that the rudiments of military drumming bear a poetic resemblance to DNA chains and their repeated motifs. I’m interested in the copy, the multiple, like repeated DNA sequences, which I explore through printmaking and drawing. I’m curious to know if I inherited rhythmic dexterity from my ancestors. Am I the Jacques Léger of the 21st century, holding within me the genetic duty to make sounds by hitting things?

Mathieu Léger, Unda I (Legend Dark 26) (with details, 2022–24, from the series Obstacles & Amendments. Performance archive, drumsticks and graphite on Fabriano paper, dimensions variable. Collection of the artist. © Mathieu Léger Photo: Mathieu Léger

MD: And the notion of time?
ML: I’m especially attuned to ideas about compression and expansion of time. My example is playing the drums; time is really important in music. For decades, I’ve been investing countless hours in deliberate practice to improve my agility, dexterity and tempo. The sound element of the installation Performing the Act That Makes the Mark, Which Makes the Sound is the result of hours and hours spent practising military drumming exercises. Viewers might be surprised to learn that this very short audio work is the result of sound recordings accumulated from hundreds of sessions over several years.

Mathieu Léger, Plausible Space, 2013–17. Maps and archival photographs, dimensions variable. Collection of the artist. Installation view at Union Gallery, Kingston, 2017. © Mathieu Léger Photo: Mathieu Léger

MD: You often say that you’re a “serial artist-in-residence.” You’ve attended almost a hundred artist residencies. How has all this time spent away from your studio influenced your creative process?
ML: Many of my art projects – like Plausible Space (2013–17), for instance – arise from my frequent travels. The themes of identity, migration and territory come to the fore in my Methodologies for Tourists project. I adapt the project to the place where I’m in residence, which often leads me to take a closer look at locations that tourists don’t visit.
I often find myself someplace where I don’t speak the language or know anyone. To counter the isolation, I carefully observe my environment and think a lot about my work and my role in society. Artist residencies allow me to concentrate on research and creation without distractions. Devoting myself to my art production isn’t always easy when I get home.

Mathieu Léger, Actions of Silence / Visibility of Comprehension and the Provenance of Dusk, 2014, from the series Methodologies for Tourists. Performances and photographs, dimensions variable. Collection of the artist. © Mathieu Léger Photo: Mathieu Léger

MD: Being selected as a finalist for the Sobey Art Award is a huge accomplishment. What would winning the award mean to you?
ML: Winning the award would be an immense honour. It would be the legitimization of my work as a New Brunswick artist. It’s difficult to forge a career as an artist, and it’s an even greater challenge when you don’t live in one of the major art centres, like Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. Winning this award would give me access to the resources I need to further explore and deepen my artistic research in large-scale projects. These conditions would contribute to the expansion of my artistic approach and give an even greater impetus to my work.       

The artist would like to acknowledge the support of artsnb, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation, with additional thanks to Artcast Inc. and TrüRoot Cymbals.

The 2024 Sobey Art Award Exhibition is on view at the National Gallery of Canada from October 4, 2024 until April 6, 2025, with the winner being announced in November 2024. The Sobey Art Award is funded by the Sobey Art Foundation and is organized and presented by the National Gallery of Canada. Share this article and subscribe to our newsletters to stay up-to-date on the latest articles, Gallery exhibitions, news and events, and to learn more about art in Canada.​