Average Joe

Maria Mahdessian

This project is a stop-motion animation that portrays the life routine of Average Joe, which consists waking up, eating, going to work, watching television, and sleeping, all without any excitement. Years pass by in a flash without a change and without Average Joe truly enjoying his life. At the end of the animation, there is darkness, which represents his final spiritual and physical death. This project’s intention is to show that life is a journey of adventures and experiences through which a person can feel truly alive. The skeleton symbolizes death and the use of grey scale represents a boring, plain, and uninteresting life.
Audio: “Living Fully Now” by Alan Watts.

Digital, skeleton dummy

Derelicte

Sandra Alexandre-Aimé

Sabrina Emanuele

Anna Luisa Lopes

Cassandra Carosello

Emilie Kehm

This project evaluates a current social issue while using the context of a wearable. The concern lays with current consumption habits taking over consumer culture. This dress was made to comment its emergence in the post-war era and how it resulted in negative environmental outcomes. The many pockets serve as storage for the daily waste an individual produces. This action changes the elegant shape of the dress and how they are seen. The way they feel about themselves also changes, making them more mindful of their personal daily waste.

Organic Linen
34 x 24 in.

Stripped

John Shukin

Julie Tremblay

Jeremy Karl

Tess Kuramoto

Lucas LaRochelle

Stripped is an exploration of identity and first impressions through the lens of clothing. By making transparent apparel, attention is focused on how many stereotypes and conclusions we, as everyday strangers and passers-by, draw from what we put on our bodies. By removing the substance from these signifiers, these conceptual containers, we are forced into a state of discomfort, searching elsewhere for ways of categorizing and understanding. Suddenly, the body becomes packaged within this plastic, stripped of its outward “face” and displayed as imperfect and raw.

Plastic, string
Two outfits

/.\

Julie Tremblay

Sandra Alexandre-Aimé

Cory Landels

John Shukin

Alexey Lazarev

Ketlin Martins

Inspired by Japanese stone gardens, /.\ is a wearable and transformable garment bag that recreates the intimacy and meditative characteristics of nature. Although the stone garden is intensely controlled (raked into a precise pattern), this garment provides the wearer with an experience that brings one in closer harmony with nature by evoking a quasi-spiritual state of being, of proximity, and of attention to nature.

Linen, screen-print, rock
40 x 40 in.

Senescentis Felix (Happy Aging)

Tia Besser-Paul

Luis Aretuo

Marie-Andrée L’Italien

Johnson Ta

Alexey Lazarev

Senescentis Felix explores the stigma around aging and ways to create a positive discussion around it. It was developed through research of people’s perception and the different kinds of aging. This wearable is a step towards the embracement of wrinkles. It encourages its wearer to play with its pulley devices to create deep, dense wrinkles along their own neck. The more intense the wrinkles, the more interesting the piece becomes. This wearable acts as a platform for discussions between the wearer and the people that interact with them.

Organza silk, cotton, transparent thread
30 x 20 in.

Nef pour quatorze reines, Polytechnique Memorial Proposal

Julie Tremblay

John Shukin

Although the soil is never fully fertile, we must still plant seeds of hope for women around the world.
Nef pour quatorze reines is a proposal for a memorial commemorating the Polytechnique massacre. It is an attempt to help reflect on the tragedy, but also to provide a seed of hope and a way to move forward. Made using predominantly burnt cedar, the memorial comprises a seating area surrounding an inner sanctum filled with plants, offering an opportunity for meditation and renewal.

Burnt wood sticks, MDF, Plexiglas, FIMO paste, soil
15 x 11 x 6 in.

Speak

Laurence Pilon

Quebec has a complex history of linguistic conflicts still affecting the present multicultural society. “Speak White” refers to a racist expression used by English authorities in the late 60s to regulate French-Canadian workers. It is also the name of a poem, written by Michèle Lalonde after the Quiet Revolution, that critiques the ethnic and linguistic tensions. Quebecer Marco Micone, born in Italy, wrote “Speak What” years later in response to Lalonde’s work, suggesting that intolerances prevailing in the province are now directed against immigrants.

Ink, Paper, Poetry
2 x 24 x 36 in.

U & I

Jade Brisson

Edward Nyamenkum

Frédérique Pelletier

Gabrielle Vaillancourt

Tea interacts with three different senses: taste, smell, and touch. Tea is also a culture and experience, which is why the tea bags are bound in pairs. This encourages the receiver to share the moment of enjoyment of a warm cup of tea with a loved one. The tags are perforated so they can be split in two like a wishbone. They contain seeds meant to be planted, adding another level of depth to the ritual of tea, one that continues beyond a cup.

Fabric (cotton), tealeaves, wood
16 x 12 in.

Women of Syria

Fanny Marcoux-Lebeau

This book of photographs shows the situation and condition Syrian women refugees must face daily. The book layout is minimal in order to focus solely on the beautiful portraits taken by Adnan Sharbaji and Giulio Magnifico. An image is worth a thousand words. The little amount of information is also chosen to engage the viewer in doing their own research, especially when we are constantly being fed false information from several media outlets. The book was also done in the hope to give agency to these women.

Mayfair, Strathmore paper
5 x 8 in. (closed), 10 x 8 in. (open)

Uprooted – The Syrian Refugees Crisis

Joey-Christophe Gravel

Uprooted discusses the Syrian Refugees Crisis. Evolving from deep conceptual and content research, this project is a social study, divided into several age groups, that focuses on the challenges of being a refugee. These people’s constant struggle is reflected in the book through a simple and efficient design, captivating photographs, and the informational content. The book is entirely handmade.

Paper
6.5 x 8 in. (open), 13 x 8 in. (closed)

L’Exil

Laurie Goudreau

L’Exil is based on a series of testimonies to create a shared story, a path that occurs too often. The book shapes itself following the media’s awareness on Syrian refugees in 2015. L’Exil rises from the realities of political conflicts, social crisis, and torn lives, in order to depict a portrait of refugees. Often raw, often poetic, this identity search, once seemed lost, lives in various emotions. L’Idéologie encourages the reader to reflect on their own identity and to write their own story.

Academia paper, sewing thread
4 x 5.5 in.