Isabelle Hayeur

Isabelle Hayeur (born 1969) is a Canadian visual artist known for her photographs and experimental videos. She has also created site-specific installations, public art commissions and photography books. Her work critically examines environmental issues, urban development, suburban sprawl, and social conditions, often blending documentary and manipulated imagery to evoke alienation, loss, and resistance.

Early life and education Isabelle Hayeur was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1969. Hayeur obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1997 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2002, both from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Hayeur currently resides in the Rawdon Municipality, located on the Ouareau River in southwestern Quebec, Canada.

Artistic practice Hayeur’s art practice examines environmental transformation, urban development, suburban expansion, and social conditions, often combining documentary observation with constructed or altered imagery.

In her early work from the late 1990s, Hayeur produced panoramic photographs of expansive landscapes that she digitally composites by incorporating elements from multiple locations. These constructed images go beyond conventional documentary photography to reveal environmental conditions, conceptual tensions, and the mediated nature of our perceptions of place.

In the mid-2000s, Hayeur examined suburban landscapes through photomontage. In Model Homes (2004–2007), she manipulated images of prefabricated houses characterized by standardized architectural features. By digitally placing these structures within varied or incongruous settings, the series addresses themes of uniformity, placelessness, and the expansion of suburban development into rural areas.

In the related series Excavations (2005–2007), she merged ground-level views of suburban homes with images of construction sites, revealing layers of topsoil removal and underlying geological strata. These works juxtapose built environments with their natural foundations, emphasizing processes of land transformation and erasure.

Beginning in 2008, she developed the ongoing underwater photography series Underworlds / Troubled Waters. Using underwater cameras in polluted or altered aquatic environments, including areas near New Jersey’s Chemical Coast and Staten Island, she documents ecosystems affected by low oxygen levels and human activity. The images often contrast visual qualities associated with beauty and abstraction with evidence of ecological degradation, drawing attention to connections between submerged environments and surface conditions.

More recent projects reflect a shift toward a more direct documentary approach. These include bodies of work focused on the American West (Desert Shores , Fault Line , Seared Horizons ), wildfire-affected landscapes (Wild Times , which addresses migration, border infrastructure, and associated social tensions. Across these projects, her practice continues to engage with themes of ecological change, contested spaces, and the social and political dimensions of landscape. Notable works include Vertige (2000), which immerses the viewer in a disorienting plunge over an open-pit mine landscape ; Losing Ground (2009), which documents rapidly changing territories to confront processes of land erosion and homogenization ; and Adrift (2019), filmed in the polluted waters of the Staten Island boat graveyard, capturing decaying vessels in a toxic environment.

Site-specific installations

Between 2002 and 2015, Hayeur created several site-specific video installations and public art projects that extended her exploration of environmental and urban themes into architectural and public spaces. , and Issue (2004), a video installation presented in an abandoned waste incinerator in Montreal. Other projects from this period, such as Murs aveugles (2014) similarly addressed issues of urban transformation, social tensions, and place-based memory through context-responsive interventions.

Themes

Urban sprawl Her works examine the environmental consequences of rapid, large-scale residential and commercial development, focusing on the tension between ongoing urbanization and the disappearance or alteration of natural and agricultural landscapes. It addresses how modern housing development can overlook the specific ecological needs of the land.

Ecotopia Ecotopia is derived from the subgenre Ecotopian fiction. Ecotopian fiction is derived from the synthesis of utopian and dystopian worlds. In 2012, Hayeur participated in a group exhibition called Ecotopia. Here, Hayeur and her contemporaries presented works that show the coexistence of rural and urban, natural and manufactured, protection and exploitation, conservation and destruction, nostalgia and futuristic vision, to challenge the notion that modernity equals progress. Hayeur's contribution was footage from her 2012 video, Losing Ground. Hayeur's video evokes themes of Ecotopia as it shows a blend of industrial architecture amongst environmental decay and erosion.

Civic resistance and social tensions

Her recent work engages with political dissent, civic protest, migration dynamics, and contested border regions. It documents social tensions, infrastructure related to borders and surveillance, and expressions of resistance within landscapes marked by human conflict and displacement. Leclerc and Gosselin examined the under-researched cognitive problem solving process in a contemporary visual arts practice.

Solo exhibitions

Contrast and indifference, Canadian Cultural Centre (Paris, France), 2026 Wild Times, Vernon Public Art Gallery (Vernon, Canada) 2025 Isabelle Hayeur : Desert Shores, Works from the permanent collection, National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada) 2023 Dépayser, Musée d'art de Joliette (Joliette, Canada) 2017 Fifty Years of Collecting Photographs: The Extended Moment, National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada) 2018 Corps étranger, Art Gallery of Windsor, (Windsor, Canada) 2017 The Edge of the Earth: Climate Change in Photography and Video, Ryerson Image Centre (Toronto, Canada) 2016 10 years gone, New Orleans Museum of Art (New Orleans, United States) 2015 Looking Forward, The Montreal Biennial, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (Montreal, Canada) 2014 Death in absentia, Pierogi Gallery (Brooklyn, United States) 2013 Placemakers, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, United States) 2012 Ecologies: A Song for Our Planet, Montreal Museum of Fine arts (Montreal, Canada) 2010 Silverstein Photography Annual (SPA), Bruce Silverstein (New York, United States) 2008 Loaded Landscapes, Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, United States) 2007 Inhabiting: the works of Isabelle Hayeur, Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, Canada), Musée National des Beaux-arts du Québec (Quebec City, Canada), Oakville Galleries (Oakville, Canada), St-Mary's University Art Gallery (Halifax, Canada) 2006 – 2007 Urban Territories, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (Montreal, Canada), Oakville Galleries (Oakville, Canada) 2006 Destinations, Laura Heon curator, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (North Adams, United States) 2004

Awards

The Prefix Prize (2025) Prix OFQJ, Champ Libre, Le Fresnoy (2004) Prix Contact For emerging photography artist (2001) Prix du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Artiste de l'année dans Lanaudière (2022) The Hnatyshyn Foundation mid-career award (2021) The Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography (2019)