Fine Art nominee

This series features produce cast aside and condemned to the bin solely because of their looks. It is a rumination on beauty, artifice, consumerism, and our broken relationship to the ecosystem. The planet cannot sustain the ever-increasing demand. The insecurity of our food system was made even more evident during the pandemic.

I compose my still lifes then I let mould gradually colonize the surfaces. I learnt to collaborate with fungi to get the effects I seek. I act on the environment, varying the moisture level, the temperature and the surface pH to encourage mould growth in a somewhat controlled way to achieve the desired level of colour and texture.

At the beginning of the series, my images were more clinical and cold, but very quickly I wanted to anchor these “portraits” in space. The parallel of themes with 17th-century Dutch still lifes lead to adopting an esthetic inspired by this painting style. Far from examining some distant phenomenon, 17th-century Dutch still lifes offer an uncanny perspective on our times, in which globalism and consumer culture seem to be reaching a peak, once again.

Will our obsession with superficial beauty and consumerism be the end of us?

Julie Bégin is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal, Canada, active in the fields of fine art photography, sculptural jewellery and art object design.

In 2021 she was awarded an honourable mention at the Neutral Density Photography Awards, for her series The Uglies. A print from the same series was selected for the 23rd edition of Parle-Moi d'Amour, the auction benefiting Les Impatients.

Works from her conceptual jewellery series Sweet Vengeance were presented at the 2021 Romanian Jewellery Week, Bucharest, and the exhibition Camp at L.A. Pai Gallery, Ottawa. In 2020-21 she took part in Beauty & Wonder Jewels, shown in Madrid, Neuchâtel, and Barcelona and multiple exhibitions in Porto, Quebec city, Vancouver, and Halifax. In 2017 she was selected for the exhibition Masters and Artisan Jewellers From Nanjing to Montreal at MUMAQ.

Julie is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. A self-taught artist, she mastered precious metalwork at the École de Joaillerie de Montréal from 2013 to 2016 and perfected her knowledge at workshops with leading artists in Montreal and Europe.

Julie Bégin’s work is part of private collections around the world.