Dominique Paul is a French Canadian residing in the Montreal region. She has been a professional artist since 1993 following a career as a systems engineering representative at IBM Canada. She is back from Australia where she completed in April 2000 a Master of Fine Arts by Research at the College of Fine Arts of the University of New South Wales, in Sydney. The preferred medium are video installation, photography and interactive multimedia. She has exhibited in Canada, Australia (Sydney), England (London), Japan (Tokyo), Mexico, Slovenia, the U.S.A. (Chicago, L.A. and N.Y.) and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, France. She has been invited to participate to two international Symposiums to create site specific works. She was invited also to present her artistic research (photos and interactive web site) at the Barnard College 1999 Feminist Art and Art History Conference, Columbia University, New York. Her interactive web site, The Flesh Garden (www.fleshgarden.net), won the prize for best Artistic web site at the 1999 Electrofringe Festival in NewCastle, Australia. It was also selected for the Festival des Images du Nouveau Monde 2000 and the European Media Arts Festival 2000. Finally, she will pursue her research in media arts at the doctorate level thanks to an excellence bursary granted by the Quebec Government, the FCAR Funds, for which she ranked first.

Artist's Statement for The Avatars series
In my studio creatures emerge from the darkness. In an alchemic process the model and the iconic figure transubstantiate for a moment to become the Other. I name these photographs The Avatars series : created by light they are ephemeral incarnations much like the cyberspace avatar where one chooses its impersonation for the web. The visual relationship contracts time and space to escape the conventions of a vintage representational mode. An art work from another era embraces the model, abolishing the interval and revealing the elusiveness of taking a critical distance. I challenge the hegemony of the objective gaze which has a tendency to dissociate the two parties involved.

The model's flesh acts as a screen, his skin is virtually tattooed, veiled by an ephemeral masquerade. Layers accumulate to blur the gender boundaries or to underscore its contruction. Like the cyberspace avatar, when the electricity goes off, so does the role playing in the studio, for only our naked humanity remains.

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