Véronique Leblanc

The critic should examine by herself, experiment …

initiate herself – I’ve found the word and I’ll stick to it –
because initiation means that you enter something, descend into it,
absorb it, and, in doing so, transform yourself and live.

– Carla Lonzi

Self-reflective, collaborative, and performative, Véronique Leblanc’s theoretical and curatorial approach plays simultaneously in the fields of anthropology, art history, sociology, and philosophy. With a particular interest in the figure of the community and the identity-related, political, and epistemological issues that it raises, Véronique literally invests in the notion of otherness, constantly challenging her own position within the art ecology. Without claiming to take on the role of artist, Véronique, as art critic, essayist, curator, and activist, invites us to rethink these positions in light of the relationships that they cause to emerge.

For her residency at Est-Nord-Est as a guest author, Véronique in fact explored the question of relationality, which she deployed, of course, as a subject of research but also as an object of analysis. Books and essays, bits of quotations gleaned here and there, images and drawings, excerpts of performances, and notes scribbled into various notebooks – all these elements were scattered around the studio to create a kind of exploded map of a research methodology under construction. Both in advance and in retrospect, Véronique staged a maieutics of the practice and criticism of art, drawing on their necessary and reciprocal epistemological exchanges to forge paths toward conceiving a more ethical or, at least, more empathic being-in-the-world. Often putting herself in the position of intermediary between “doing” and “knowing,” Véronique took the time to uncover the agency of artworks and the discourses that accompany them, and whose cathartic power might help to offer solutions for a more livable life.

In this regard, the notion of everydayness – its norms, knowledges, and practices – is core to Véronique’s long-term experimental research, which often evolves in parallel with the friendships that she forms with artists, further tightening the fertile ties between art and the everyday. With a truly embodied modesty and authenticity, Véronique succeeds in forming an intellectual commitment that harmonizes with the art interventions with which she is involved.