For the last ten years, Maryse Goudreau has turned her attention to the beluga by consecrating an archive of work to the animal. Committed to accompanying the beluga during its slow decline over a period of at least twenty years, the Gaspesian artist has created a series of photographic, sound, literary and sculptural works that cast an empathic gaze on the species, a sentinel of climate change in the North. At the invitation of curator Noémie Fortin, she revisits this corpus with the eyes of a child to create immersive works where birth and extinction coexist, drawing on her lifelong love for the animal to feel her way through a mixture of hope and mourning.

Dans l’œil du béluga, her exhibition for young audiences, uses installations involving listening, touch and play as a means of restoring the animistic thinking that characterizes childhood. Goudreau’s ecofeminist approach points up the importance of inter‑species connection, presenting the concept of mothering as the antidote to the destruction of the land and the beings who inhabit it, and calling on us to develop a sense of caring for all living things that extends beyond what is merely human. In this, she builds a sanctuary devoted to the animal and employs images of tenderness such as a beluga nursery as well as whale song listening circles, in order to spark the kind of curiosity needed to transform the world to come. Inviting us to immerse ourselves in the world of the cetacean, see ourselves reflected in our encounters with the marine mammal and those who protect it so as to better grasp the impact of its imminent extinction, Dans l’œil du béluga pushes us to change our perspective and see the world through the eyes of a beluga.