Nadege Grebmeier Forget is a Montreal artist whose work often involves stuffing cakes and maraschino cherries down her stockings. Nominated for the Emerging Curator award at the Visual Arts Award Gala this week, Grebmeier Forget straddles the line between curator and artist, which gives her a unique perspective on creation, and the connection between artist and audience. “Curating art and making art for me is like yelling out a big question,” she says. With curation, “It’s all about organizing information to have an impact on people with what touches you in the present time.”

As an artist, she feels like she’s “at the beginning of something” in her practice right now. Her work focuses on “beauty, consumership and the overwhelming burden of representation and the need to perform created by Americanized societies.” She says Montreal is not as exempt from those pressures as we might think. The city’s art scene is important to her. As a curator, she’s worked mostly with Montreal artists, and she feels that her mission right now is to promote local talent. “In the long term, I hope that the way I accompanied artists and questioned their work helps them gain confidence to explore in crazier ways.”

~ Haley Cullingham