The Ballroom

In her artistic practice, France Dubois combines video and photography producing new narrative forms with images taken from reality. In the continuation of her image production, she has developed installation works in public spaces away from the usual exhibition places. Using her knowledge of the image components, she also investigates the potential of light as an artistic medium. Within this framework she resorts to digital technologies both as technical tools and creation instruments. The audience is invited to participate in this interaction with the urban space. Her work targets not only art lovers but also the public in general. Installations often initiate a direct dialogue with the viewers and they sometimes involve the community in their conception and implementation. Resorting to elementary devices, her artworks are meant to reveal a hidden dimension of the site or intervention space. For this purpose her approach is articulates via a global perception of space including the architectural project, nearby environment, the cultural background of the site, and/or dialogue with the “users’” community. Dubois’s work includes site-specific video and light installations for Nuits Blanches in Paris, Montreal, and Toronto as well as site-specific drawings in Paris and Perm (Russia).

The Ballroom is a three-dimensional drawing conceived for the four walls of the multipurpose area in The Meadows Community Recreation Centre. It displays the trajectories of bouncing balls across a virtual space contained by those same four walls, The Ballrooms where balls escaped from the nearby gymnasium and pool area come to dance. The architectural transparency of the building and flow of natural light inspired this painting of balls passing through virtual walls. The trajectories of the dancing objects continue on outdoors. They are of all sizes ranging from ping-pong balls to basketballs. France Dubois writes, “Implicitly, the artwork continues the recreation centre mandate of mixing leisure and culture by adding the dancing activities as they were formerly practiced in community centres.”