Julie Desroches is a conceptual and interdisciplinary artist who is preoccupied with visual and theoretical representations of a contemporary identity.

Since 1998, her work has been addressing one of the most fundamental and often taken for granted topic – life. Her emotions, experience, and life itself – in every shape, form, condition, and state – are central in work.

The complexity of this timeless subject is reflected in tensions of plurality, which are reflected in the form, shape, and underlying conception of her pieces. Her works challenge presumptions, and socio-cultural boundaries about life. Each piece she creates reflects a process of deconstruction and reconstruction of her subjects, allowing her to present multiple faces of a particular event, juxtaposing beauty and ugly, young and old, acceptance and rejection.

Les fourmis is certainly the piece that illustrates best Julie’s approach to her art. This piece, as for the majority of Julie’s work, had a unique history before she even transformed it into art. Julie discovered the past of what would become Les fourmis while she was looking for a support for a painting. Behind her father’s garage she found a steel plate lying between various wood and metal pieces. This plate, a leftover from one of her father’s countless projects, was imperfect in shape and size, yet it is exactly what caught her eye and inspired her. Looking more closely, she realized that ants had laid eggs on it. Amazed by her discovery, she quickly lacquered them to freeze them in time. Inspired by the ants’ work, she added her own abstract interpretation, using mostly earth tones, to reflect life in an ants’ mound, organized chaos.