Pierre-Olivier Déry

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This installation is the result of two years of research into the cultural impact of the automobile and its place within natural landscapes. Inspired by visits to racetracks and festivals, the project addresses the car as a persistent image of progress, promising efficiency and freedom, yet generating degradation and waste in the landscapes it traverses.

The composition assembles a chassis and fragments of bodywork with a system of pumps containing colored liquids, evoking a wrecked vehicle kept alive. In response to this machinery is the presence of common reed, an invasive exotic species. Found in southern Quebec along the Trans-Canada Highway, its proliferation has been favored by wet ditches and winds channeled through asphalt corridors. This parallel invites us to consider the car as a living, invasive system—on par with this plant, which inadvertently benefits from and contributes to the transformation of landscapes.

Pierre-Olivier Déry is a student member and a recipient of the Hexagram-ELEKTRA project call 2025. He is currently pursuing a master degree in Media and Visual Arts at UQAM.

About the Hexagram-Elektra Call for Projects

The partnership between the Hexagram Network and ELEKTRA aims to encourage exchanges between practice-based and academic communities. The ELEKTRA Gallery creates a space conducive to aesthetic and discursive research through digital artistic production. Consequently, this program values experimental or critical research-creation projects and supports the development of emerging artist members of the Network.

Cover Image: ⒸPierre-Olivier Déry

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