Cynthia Montier is an artist and researcher based in Strasbourg. A graduate of the Université de Strasbourg and the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC), Cynthia Montier’s work bears witness to a strong relationship with public space and an attachment to the notion of groups, collective bodies and communities. The artist trains in the rights of foreigners and cultural rights, following the training program for artist interveners (CFPI) at the Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR) in Strasbourg. From the fields of social anthropology and a participatory methodologies, Cynthia Montier develops an artistic approach combining co-creation and intervention, ritual, community and performative practices. She is interested in collective memories, intentional modes of expression and symbolic appropriations, which are part of a social commitment or a form of devotion, most often in favour of justice. Cynthia Montier places great importance on notions of belonging, friendship, belief, attachment, connection and struggle. Strongly influenced by the stories, practices, affects and objects that emerge from her encounters, the artist generates relational spaces using various methodologies from the fields of popular education, critical and community pedagogy and feminist knowledge. Echoing existing forms from a historical field or social movements, the artist proposes a diversity of formats and participatory devices investing a specific activation (from the interview to the workshop, from the survey to the performance, from the ritual to the demonstration, from the votive archive to the speaking object), as many supports for intuition.
Since 2019, she has formed a duo with Ophélie Naessens exploring the notion of mineral sociality and ritual pedagogies through the prism of dialogic forms, investigations and performances navigating between pedagogy, activism and stone rituals. Together with Sophie Prinssen, she runs the « Activismes Ésotériques – Magie – Performance – Résistance » project (since 2021): a « research coven », a ritual and activist working group that gives rise to times of research and performances in the public space, to which the nineteenth issue of the journal Proteus devotes an article in the dedicated issue: « Le rituel dans l’art ». Her work has been shown at the Ferme du Buisson (Noisiel), the Institut d’Art Contemporain de Villeurbanne, the 49° Nord 6° Est Frac Lorraine (Metz), the Magasin des Horizons (Grenoble), the Printemps de Septembre (Toulouse), the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg and internationally at AQB (Budapest), the Japanisches Palais (Dresden), the Centre of Gravity (Bristol), the Kleine Humboldt Galerie (Berlin) as well as the Richter (Moscow), the Royal Holloway School (London), the National Ethnographic Museum of Romania ASTRA Museul (Sibiu), and the research centre for contemporary art IUNO (Rome).
In 2021, Cynthia Montier will receive support from the DRAC Grand- Est for the production of the work karma with Abdul-Hadi Yasuev. Her works and protocols are part of the collections of the Magasin des Horizons, the Frac PACA, the Artothèque de Strasbourg and the IAC Villeurbanne.
