Michelle Bui

Michelle Bui’s photographic and sculptural practice reflect the processes of accumulation, presentation, and eventual decay that mark our relationships to seemingly mundane items. Sensual and sensorial, her images point to the negotiation between our understanding of ourselves and the objects that we amass. In the same breath, they cause us to question our appetite for these objects, this excess, in the first place.

Her materials are gathered primarily from the aisles of grocery, hardware, or craft stores; venues where a seemingly endless array of objects co-exist, ready to be purchased, consumed, and discarded en masse, ordered only by what the artist calls “the detached pragmatism of consumerism.” Once these objects find a place in Bui’s studio, she parses their formal or material kinships and assembles them into temporary, fragile assemblages that sometimes exist just long enough to be photographed before they collapse, disintegrate, or even decompose.

Michelle Bui is a Montreal-based artist working in photography and sculpture. Recent solo exhibitions include Naked Excess, Esker Foundation, Calgary (2022); Mutable Matter, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2022); Spilled Plenitude, Franz Kaka, Toronto (2020); Centerfold, Parisian Laundry, Montreal (2019); Plein Soleil, Circa, Montreal (2019); Pool of Plenty, Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal (2018). Bui completed her MA at Université du Québec à Montréal and at Beaux-arts de Paris, and her BFA at Concordia University. Her work is included in numerous collections, including those of the City of Montreal, Hydro-Québec, RBC Art Collection, Scotiabank, Collection Desjardins, TD Bank, and Global Affairs Canada (Government of Canada).

A special thank you to Elizabeth Diggon, Assistant Curator at the Esker Foundation, who let us use part of her exhibition text for this biography.