DANS LES ENTRAILLES DU RAVIN

Valérie Cain Bourget

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However, during her stay, the artist discovered an old clandestine dump on the riverbank, opposite the train station, dating from a time when everyone had to organize their own waste disposal. Often carrying memories and valuable information, these trash cans provide insight into past ways of life. Like an archaeological site, the artist surveyed the area as an observation zone to extract building materials and other waste. 

 

During her excavations, Valérie Cain Bourget found her favorite raw material, expanded polystyrene, scattered here and there in a multitude of scraps, probably washed away by floods. A revolutionary universal material used as insulation, found in every corner of the world in the form of non-biodegradable waste, these pieces of plastic derived from crude oil and composed of 95% air are given new life in their new environment, regenerating under the effect of an entropic metamorphosis as they are gradually digested by the forest. 

 

Often found in the form of small plaques from larger panels, these porous surfaces, sometimes shiny like fragile but indestructible nuggets, bear the marks of time and imprint all kinds of information: insects ingest them and form internal channels that serve as their habitat, while other animals leave traces of their passage. By incorporating them into his installations, the artist gives them a new artistic lease of life.

 

In the form of a small handmade booklet, 1- Mon beau ravin (My Beautiful Ravine) recounts Valérie Cain Bourget's wanderings in the ravine through fragments of automatic writing inspired by it. The construction gloves used to extract the elements and other artifacts are on display to the public.

 

In installation 2—Spéléothème (Speleothem), a polystyrene plate is used in the same way as a clay tablet, humanity's first writing medium. Small pieces of bark are embedded in its surface, arranged in a grid pattern reminiscent of the lines on a sheet of paper and the way ancient peoples wrote using a stylus made from a bevelled reed. Other shapeless pieces of polystyrene are stacked on top of each other, like a failing column on the verge of collapse, and another sheet is held precariously in place by a dry branch.

 

Like trophies paying homage to this graveyard of waste, the artist has, in 3 - Paysage d'un effondrement ordinaire (Landscape of an Ordinary Collapse), the artist meticulously arranged the spoils of his excavations on a museum pedestal: artifacts, dried twigs, rusty metal parts, and pieces of plastic come together in a motley assemblage, testifying to their unlikely proximity on the same site.

 

From her first day in Matapédia, the artist filmed the melancholic landscape before her in the incessant rain, filtering the light through a screen of water. 4- Aube (Dawn), filmed with an outdated camera, highlights the technical flaws of the old device, from pixelation and exaggerated pink tones to the jerky automatic voice. She questions this low-contrast image in relation to our relationship with high definition.

 

With undefined functionality and found in large numbers in the ravine, enigmatic plastic blocks form a ritual circle in 5- Error Code, while an overlaid projection shows the artist collecting the debris, his white museum gloves having been swapped for construction gloves.

 

In the waiting room, Est-il possible de lire l’avenir dans les entrailles d’une vieille dompe? (Is it possible to read the future in the bowels of an old dump?) consists of two pieces of polystyrene found in the landfill site: one bears the imprint of an animal's hoof, and the other bears the artist's writing, which punctuates this question, reminiscent of esotericism when diviners read the future in the entrails of a sacrificed animal.

 

The result of an ecological and anti-consumerist approach, Dans les entrailles du ravin brings together a body of work produced almost entirely from elements found within a radius of less than 100 meters from the artist's studio at La Gare. Valérie Cain Bourget has also demonstrated her interest in constructing new configurations from failure, waste, and transitional materials. Her precarious structures speak as much to the resourcefulness and resilience of working classes outside major urban centers as they do to her attraction to non-places, transitional spaces imbued with a melancholy related to the present times.

 

The exhibition Dans les entrailles du ravin (In the Depths of the Ravine) is on display at the Matapédia Station – Artistic and Community Hub, from November 15, 2025, to April 1, 2026, open to the public on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hot drinks and pastries are available during exhibition hours.

 

Caroline Andrieux, exhibition curator

 

ABOUT VALÉRIE CAIN BOURGET

In small, precarious installations and textured videos, Valérie Cain Bourget's multidisciplinary work consists of creating disenchanted dream worlds, produced with found materials and a limited budget. Her references come from a dystopian world evoked by a post-apocalyptic DIY-style organization. Through the organizational reconfiguration of rough materials and elements collected in nature, the artist studies the structures of improvised mechanisms and artisanal devices, built in emergency situations. Cain Bourget draws heavily on the vernacular landscapes of the Gaspé Peninsula, with constant references to the horizon, the sea, and nature, as well as stilts, campfires, and hunting traps. She explores the aesthetic codes and mechanisms of this type of improvised assembly (traps, shelters, rain collectors, etc.) necessary in a post-apocalyptic context. Whether it is a pebble, a video damaged by compression errors, or insulation from the petrochemical industry, the elements are used in the same way, acting outside a hierarchy that would establish their value. Cain Bourget gives new presence to the materials she uses to pursue her reflection on the new-rudimentary. The artist questions impermanence and the virtual, and addresses the empathy of synthetic consciousnesses in a post-end context.

 

A sculptor and video artist from Cap d'Espoir, Valérie Cain Bourget is currently completing her Master's degree in visual and media arts at Laval University (Quebec). The early stages of her professional career have been marked by prestigious awards and invitations to renowned artist centers and foundations. Recipient of the Louise Viger and Tomber dans l'Œil awards in 2023, Cain Bourget held her first exhibition in an artist-run centre in 2024 with Code d'erreur : l'aube at the petite salle de l'Œil de Poisson. In 2025, the artist exhibited collectively at Écart in Rouyn-Noranda and completed a residency at the Sagamie center in Saguenay. She was one of the finalists for the Télé-Québec emerging artist award and has just won the Grantham Foundation's New Horizons award. 

After a three-month stay at La Gare as part of the new Résidence Cap Gaspésie, the artist presents Dans les entrailles du ravin (In the Depths of the Ravine), her latest works produced recently.