Appareil résiduel is an installation by Suzanne Landry [student, UQAM], presented in May 2025 in the Hexagram experimentation room. The work combines drawing and videographic imagery and includes a station activated by the artist where part of the piece is created in real time. This exhibition marks the culmination of her research-creation project carried out as part of her Master’s degree in Visual and Media Arts, under the supervision of Gisèle Trudel [co-investigator, UQAM].
Rooted in a reflection on soil conceived as a spatiotemporal landscape shaped by the dynamics between human and more-than-human (Haraway, 2020), Appareil résiduel explores the post-industrial site of the former Dominion Bridge company in Lachine (Montreal). The installation focuses on the site’s residues, viewed as fertile ground for observing the entangled forces of “natureculture” (Haraway, 2003). It unfolds a practice where stratification and contamination become creative processes, inviting us to rethink the relationships between alteration and creation alongside living forces.
Interdisciplinary Processes and Explorations
Suzanne Landry conceived this project by weaving connections between art, science, and philosophy. Inspired by the approaches of Ed Ruscha (Stains, 1969) and Susan Schuppli (Learning From Ice, 2019–2025), she initiated a collaboration with the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at UQAM.
Alongside geological technician Diogo Barnetche, she learnt to use the Keyence VHX-7000 digital microscope, which allowed her to closely examine samples collected from contaminated sites in Montreal. Thanks to its powerful 250 mm lens and advanced features, including 3D animated visualization, the microscope reveals a granularity which is otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
In such exercise, while the geologist identifies plastic, glass, or minerals such as sand, the artist perceives a tangle of colorful, unsedimented dusts, with textures and forms that evoke narratives, both sensitive and speculative.
Landry, S. (2022). Échantillon #10_DB. Video excerpt from the Keyence digital software.
Thus, scientific and artistic knowledge meet and mutually enrich one another, serving as a means to explore the stratification. In this context, stratification is understood as Deleuze and Guattari (1980) define it: an organization of materialities that momentarily stabilizes the chaos of flows. This process gives rise to entanglements and zones of encounter, as creation emerges in a shifting in-between where relationships form, transform, and recombine.
From this perspective, Suzanne Landry accelerates the decomposition of residual materials collected on-site through a range of physical, artisanal, and chemical processes: compression, grinding, dyes, pigments, and lacquers. She also incorporates water in its various states (freezing, thawing, evaporation) to support and accompany these transformations.
Her explorations take shape in compositions that engage with the forces of living matter, guided by a logic of co-piloting rather than control over the creative process. In this context, stratification and contamination become, for her, vectors of contingency and transformation within the “natureculture” soil. They echo its ongoing cycles of metamorphosis, both constructive and transformative.
Stratification and contamination. Details of the interactive station, experimentation room, Hexagram UQAM. Photo Suzanne Landry.
Spatial composition
The week-long residency in the Hexagram experimentation room, held prior to the exhibition, was instrumental in shaping how the project took form within the space. Suzanne Landry first projected the wall label onto the floor, then onto a curtain—which quickly became an important element. It redefined the space, creating a soft barrier that concealed the active station from view and enabled a progressive discovery of the installation.
The work unfolds across three zones, each corresponding to a stage in the creative process: identification, transformation, and evolution. This configuration invites a non-linear reading of the exhibition, where the gaze pauses, and returns—mirroring the nature of stratification itself.
In the first space, a large wall label introduces the “active witnesses” of Appareil résiduel. Their names ripple, projected onto the curtain, as if they were carried by water or a seismic wave. For the artist, this visual flow evokes both the cycles of living matter and the geological faults that signal a landscape in the making: unstable, shifting, and potentially transforming.
Exhibition view, Hexagram experimentation room, UQAM. Photos: Annie France Leclerc.
Exhibition view, Hexagram experimentation room, UQAM. Photos: Annie France Leclerc.
Transformation
In the second space, the undulation continues in the form of a suspended relief between floor and ceiling. This structure evokes the connections between the Earth and its atmosphere, both involved in the formation and transformation of the soil and its layers.
The arrangement of papers, ponctuated by wide openings, subtly invites visitors to enter the installation. A lighting system, programmed with the software TouchDesigner, accompanies this setup: its slow, continuous modulation—almost imperceptible—gently illuminates and fades the forms, suggesting an extended, organic temporality akin to that of living matter.
Inside, the drawings reveal themselves up close, shaped by the interaction between dyes and pigments derived from plants, metals, and minerals, fused into tracing paper.
Installation details, experimentation room, Hexagram UQAM. Photos: Annie France Leclerc.
Each day, the artist places blocks of ice saturated with dyes and pigments on a glass surface laid over a roll of tracing paper. As the ice melts, it slowly releases its contents: the liquid seeps out, overflows, and infiltrates beneath the glass, tracing unpredictable paths.
Photo : Kyra Nercessian.
Photo : Annie France Leclerc.
Photo : Suzanne Landry.
Natureculture
Upon contact with the compressed paper, the spreading liquid generates compositions shaped by oscillations, overlays, and saturations. These emerging forms reenact the dynamics of stratification and contamination (two intertwined forces) that the artist associates with the continuous evolution of “natureculture” soil.
Landry, S. Dé-paysage_29052025. Video excerpt, 1:22 min.Landry, S. Dé-paysage_30052025. Video excerpt, 1:40 min.Landry, S. Dé-paysage_02062025. Video excerpt, 1:36 min.
Suzanne Landry is an artist based in Montreal (Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang). She is a master’s candidate in visual and media arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal, and she also holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial design from the Université de Montréal (1985). Her expanded painting and drawing practice explores notions of landscape and bioregion in relation to climate change, within an approach where research-creation and engaged citizenship converge.
Her work has been presented in over fifteen exhibitions across Québec and is part of several private collections in Europe and the Americas, as well as one public collection (City of Saint-Lambert). In December 2025, her master’s project will be featured at the Grantham Foundation for Art and the Environment as part of the exhibition Horizons nouveaux.
Acknowledgements
Suzanne Landry warmly thanks Gisèle Trudel, her research supervisor, for her guidance and unwavering enthusiasm. She acknowledges the support of MÉDIANE, Canada Research Chair in Arts, Practice Ecotechnologies, and Climate Change, as well as that of the Hexagram network and Hexagram-UQAM, whose technical team ensured the successful realization of the exhibition.
She acknowledges Diogo Barnetche’s generous embrace of the dialogue between art and science. Finally, she extends heartfelt thanks to Gaspard Vié, Gisèle Trudel, Kyra Nercessian Revenko, Mélodie-Claire Jetté, Nicolas Vié, and Poli Wilhelm, whose support was invaluable.
Références
Deleuze, G. et Guattari, F. (1980). Capitalisme et schizophrénie, tome II: Mille Plateaux. (Les Éditions de Minuit).
Haraway, D. (2003). The Companion Species Manifesto, dogs, people and significant otherness. Prickly paradigm Press.
Haraway, D. (2020). Vivre avec le trouble (2e éd., V. Garcia, trad.). Mondes à Faire.
