Marie J. Jean

Marie J. Jean is the executive and artistic director of VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine. She is also an exhibition curator, and teaches at Université du Québec à Montréal. For the past fifteen years, she has dedicated herself to research focusing on theory and practices around contemporary art and exhibitions. Her McGill University PhD thesis traced an alternative history of artist exhibitions, positing them as a reflective practice. Since the mid-1990s, she has organized more than a hundred exhibitions, and in 2013 received the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award in recognition of the excellence of her curatorial practice. In the course of these achievements, she has collaborated with numerous artists and institutions in Canada as well as abroad, orchestrating the first solo shows in Montreal of Yael Bartana, James Benning, Maria Eichhorn, Omer Fast, David Maljković, Ján Mančuška, N.E. Thing Co. and VALIE EXPORT; presenting landmark works by John Baldessari, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Duchamp and Jan Švankmajer; and highlighting the works of established Quebec artists including Raymond Gervais, Angela Grauerholz, Serge Tousignant, and Irene F. Whittome. She has also staged exhibitions for the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Germany, and Villa Arson – Centre national d’art contemporain in Nice, France.