Cybèle B. Pilon is a multidisciplinary artist and professional trained ceramist. Born in Montreal in 1990 (Quebec, Canada), she lives and works there. After a BA in communication at University of Montreal in 2013, she completed a DEC in applied arts-ceramics in 2017 at Bonsecours ceramic Center. Since 2017, Cybèle has been working mainly with clay through the prism of functional art and uses pattern as a form of visual communication. Inspired by her french Canadian cultural heritage, she develops her language by declining and altering pre-existing patterns she found in public spaces, Quebec’s built heritage or folk art. Her work is characterized by brightly colored surface decorations made with a water etching technique.

« Although I work mainly with ceramic paste, the "decorative" remains the real main raw material of my practice. I am also interested in everything that was historically discredited on the basis of their “femininity”, considered non-essential or superfluous in Western culture. I want to reclaim what is coded as « amateur » and inferior : Craft over fine arts, maximalist over minimalist, feminine over masculine, commercial over institutional. I long for a place where distinction between tableware and sculptural work is non-existent, earthenware is valued as much as porcelain and surface decorations are as important as form. Through what we can identified as "functional" or paradoxically "decorative" art, I like to explore material culture and the dialogues about identity, transmission and memory that stem from it.

I find my inspiration in vernacular art, pop culture and decorative practices traditionally performed by women. I create colorful, highly ornamented and sometimes ambiguous objects. Through my work, I do not wish to embrace dominant aesthetic codes. I am rather interested in the dialogues that function and aesthetics raise, in the narrative potential of the ordinary object. I am looking for ambiguity, the blur line between the princess and the clown, and objects that echo the complex world from which they emerge. My creations sprout from tradition, bloom in the contemporary world and are the future vestiges of the past. 

I think art should impregnate our ordinary daily life and I believe that the domestic space is a radical and powerful place of artistic diffusion. Therefore, I militate for the de-hierarchization of functional object in the art world. »


If you want to know more about my projects and daily life, you can follow me on instagram. Also, I love seeing people using their pieces! Please tag me and show me how you use yours!

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