Festival Franco-Ontarien 2025 – 10 Franco-Ontarian Artists
BRAVO Collective Exhibition
Festival Franco-Ontarien – Ottawa, June 13–15, 2025
Festival Franco-Ontarien: A Milestone Celebration
The Festival Franco-Ontarien 2025 marked its 50th year. This important cultural event brought together artists and audiences from across Ontario. To celebrate, the visual arts organization BRAVO presented a group show. Ten Franco-Ontarian artists were featured, each offering a unique voice.
Denis Leclerc and the Digital Fragments Series
Among them, Denis Leclerc presented Digital Fragments 407, part of his ongoing Digital Fragments Series. His work focuses on digital abstraction. It explores how memory, rhythm, and space can shape an image. In contrast to more figurative works, his piece offers something quieter, more open.
Digital Fragments 407 shows blurred shapes, gentle tones, and fractured geometry. It was printed on metallic Hahnemühle paper, which gives it a soft glow. Rather than represent something, it suggests a trace — something that was once there and now lingers.
Working with Ambiguity
Leclerc starts each piece with digital gestures. He adds, erases, and builds textures. As a result, each image becomes a kind of surface memory. Instead of telling a story, the work invites stillness. Meanwhile, the viewer fills in the gaps.
This process leaves room for interpretation. The final image feels suspended, not fixed, but alive. In other words, Leclerc creates presence through absence. Therefore, his art speaks not through signs, but through atmosphere.
A Dialogue Among Artists
BRAVO’s exhibition highlighted a wide range of practices. Some artists used bold colours and direct messages. Others worked with poetic forms or delicate materials. Together, they created a rich and varied dialogue.
Leclerc’s work added a subtle voice. Instead of identity or narrative, he explored structure and silence. As a result, his piece raised a lasting question: is there such a thing as Franco-Ontarian art? Or is it more of a shared condition — shaped by geography, language, and the need to adapt?
Rather than answer, the show let the question remain. It suggested that art made in French, in Ontario, does not always follow a single path. Still, it carries something in common — a way of seeing that resists borders and speaks in layers.
Artists Featured in the Festival Franco-Ontarien Exhibition
Nancy Bellegarde, Janette Woodrow, Ashley Guénette, Stéphanie Duperron, Gaia Orion, Armand Diangienda, Marguerite Morin, Geneviève Thauvette, Denis Leclerc, and Laurent Vaillancourt.