Amélie Girard

I am a mixed media artist based in Lisbon, Portugal. My work spans sculpture and installation and is rooted in craft practices and materials, in particular glass and ceramics. Through my practice I explore the physical nature of matter, the limitations of the human experience, and the intricate ways in which they combine to foster a longing for truth. My current projects examine more particularly the silence that sometimes emerges — fleetingly, unexpectedly — from the chaos of everyday life, and which seems to reveal the very essence of the world.

Q&A

Artist Statement

At age four, I used to secretly squeeze through the cracks in our backyard fence to go and explore the world on the other side. One step at a time, a little further each time, I began to perceive the overwhelming immensity that surrounded me, majestic, complex, brimming with secrets to be told – provided that I could speak its language. And just like that, without knowing it, I had embarked on the quest of a lifetime: to understand the world.So I wandered and wondered, from one country to the next and from mathematics to glass to art, always impelled by this same fascination for the unknown and the inaccessible, by this same desire to discover “what lies beyond” – beyond the backyard fence, beyond sight, beyond the human scope. Pursuing truth.Perhaps it is futile. Perhaps truth, too, lies somewhere beyond, forever out of reach. Yet isn’t it possible sometimes, simply by contemplating the horizon, to gather a sense of infinity?My artistic work arises from that reflection. Feet anchored to the ground and hands anchored on matter, I endeavour to catch glimpses of the invisible, to brush against the intangible. Through a multidisciplinary practice engaging mostly with sculpture and installation and involving a wide variety of materials and techniques, I explore the physical nature of matter, the limitations of human perception, and the intricate ways in which they combine to foster a longing for truth. My recent projects explore more particularly the patterns that sometimes emerge from the chaos of everyday life – fleetingly, unexpectedly – and which seem to express the very essence of the world.