Maude Léonard-Contant is a Canadian-Swiss artist born in 1979 in Joliette, Quebec, who currently lives and works in Basel, Switzerland. Her multidisciplinary practice spans writing, sculpture, installation, and gouache painting, with a focus on the interplay between language, materiality, and human experience. Her work often explores themes of nature, representation, and the human relationship with objects and environments, blending traditional craftsmanship with tactile, poetic elements. At the 2025 Swiss Art Awards she presents a floor sculpture, titled “Mordre la poussière” (Bite the Dust).
Maude Léonard-Contant: Mordre la poussière, 2025. Swiss Art Awards 2025. Basel (Switzerland), June 16, 2025.
Léonard-Contant’s art is characterized by its use of language—both explicit and implied—often manifesting in abstract or nonverbal forms. For instance, her 2020 exhibition No Edit Can Fail Tint at Kunstmuseum Luzern featured nine tons of reddish-brown molding sand shaped into a desert-like “language-landscape,” with haiku-style poems pressed into it, alongside ceramics and water, evoking remnants of lost civilizations. Her works also incorporate materials like bamboo, silk, leather, and dried plants, reflecting on the physical and cultural dimensions of everyday life. She often examines how language shapes perception, navigating the gaps between different languages and cultures, influenced by her multilingual background in French, English, Swiss German, and Standard German.
She holds a BA from UQAM (Montreal, 2007) and an MA from Concordia University (Montreal) with an exchange at the Glasgow School of Art (2012). Her exhibitions include solo and group shows across Canada, Switzerland, and Europe, such as Earth-moving (2022) at Kunsthaus Baselland and Wie Sprache die Welt erfindet (2024) at Chur Museum. She won the 2019 Prize of the Kunstgesellschaft Luzern, leading to her 2020 Kunstmuseum Luzern exhibition, and received a publication award from the City of Luzern for a monograph in the spot on series. Her work is supported by institutions like the Canada Council for the Arts and Pro Helvetia, and she has participated in residencies, including Residency Unlimited in 2011.
Her art invites viewers to engage with meticulously crafted spaces—described as lettered or interior landscapes—where materials and language create sensory, reflective experiences that question representation and human connection to the world.
Text/details for “Mordre la poussière”:
So, what if we were nowhere near closure?
The doers shall never be undone.
Oh god: soggy ice cream sandwich, vague alibis, out of joint inner speeches, leeches, be my guest!
Or tu sais qu’il est inutile de passer cette matière au filtre de l’analyse. Oje! Ça tient bon
-c’est que ça fait corps depuis belle lurette.
Alors?
Ravaler en douce, ni vue, ni connue.
Yours phagocytedly,
für immer und ewig
Solids: alabaster, angelite, blue marble, beeswax, cardboard, cobalt mineral lick, cobalt porcelain, fir tree, glass evil eye beads, magnets, plastiline, porcupine quills, tempered chrome steel, stoneware
Liquids: balsam fir resin, blue spirulina, pumpkin seed oil, tender violet waterman ink, wild blueberry juice
Powders: cobalt porcelain, foundry sand, iron filings, medicinal clay, wild blueberry powder
Ultra-thin: carbon paper, chrome steel mosquito netting, horsehair, ‘Loop the Loop’ and ‘Ubu Blues’ Iris petals, peacock feathers
30 × 288 × 840 cm
