Nelly-Eve Rajotte

Nelly-Ève Rajotte is a professor at the School of Design at UQAM, where she leads the Moving Image and Sound Design research axis. A visual and media artist, her practice engages time-based media, moving image, sound, immersion and the experiential dimension of perception, explored through performance and installation. Her research-creation focuses particularly on non-human modes of landscape capture, using LiDAR, biosensors, artificial intelligence, and robotics, while examining the sensitive entanglements between technology, the body, and the environment. Her works, recognized for their immersive and monumental presence, challenge conditions of reception and open new forms of perceptual otherness. In Quebec, her projects have been presented at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MACM), the Musée d’art de Joliette (MAJ), Fonderie Darling, Occurrence, Clark, Optica, and Circa. Internationally, her work has circulated in festivals and events such as MUTEK (CA, JP, MX, AR), the International Festival of Films on Art, the KIKK Festival (Belgium), Transmediale (Berlin), ISEA, Lab30 (Germany), and the International Short Film Festival of Berlin.<br>Her upcoming exhibitions include solo presentations at Contemporary Calgary (CA) and Emerson Contemporary (Boston, US) in 2026. Her works are part of several public collections, including that of Hydro-Québec.

École de design UQAM

Étiquette : anglais

  • NOW

    Nelly-Eve Rajotte. Matter. In the depths of flesh, the delicacy of invasive machines

    Curator : Ariane De Blois

    From June 14 2025 to September 7 2025

    Musée d’art de Joliette (MAJ)

    • crédits: Vue de l’exposition Nelly-Eve Rajotte. Matière. Dans la profondeur de la chair, la délicatesse des machines invasives, Musée d’art de Joliette, 2025. Photo : Paul Litherland

    About —

    Known for her immersive video installations, Nelly-Eve Rajotte presents Matter. In the depths of flesh, the delicacy of invasive machines, her most personal work to date. Based on her own experience with robot-assisted abdominal surgery, Rajotte’s piece involves an operation conducted by the medical robot Da Vinci, and invites us on a fanciful voyage to the heart of an imaginary patient’s body.

    Via a large-format projection that combines real images shot by a camera, ones generated by artificial intelligence, and others modelled in 3D, Nelly-Eve Rajotte explores the growing integration of robotics and intelligent systems in the field of medicine. She also questions the complex relationship between medicine, the body, and women’s health.

    The first sequences of the video reveal the Da Vinci robot, with its impressive, mechanical, spider-like appearance, as it moves with surprising dexterity thanks to its multiple, articulated limbs. The video then immerses us into the patient’s belly as she is transformed into a teeming, biomorphic landscape.

    Through her speculative approach, Nelly-Eve Rajotte adopts a feminist perspective that reconfigures our perception of the body’s materiality. She offers a powerful and sensitive vision of the female body that has ruptured with the objectifying representations of the male gaze, inherited from artistic traditions and scientific knowledge. In Rajotte’s eyes, the interior landscape comes alive and becomes a topography of possibility, where organic forms evoke a vibrant, flowing space full of memories and sensations.

    Biography —

    Nelly-Eve Rajotte is a professor at the School of Design of UQAM, where she heads the Moving Image and Sound Design axis. As a visual and media artist, her hybrid practice is particularly interested in moving images, sound, and immersion, through performance and installation. She is also a filmmaker, editor, and composer. In addition to numerous exhibitions in Quebec, including at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MACM), Fonderie Darling, Parisian Laundry, Occurrence, Clark, Optica, and Circa, her works have been shown in several festivals in Canada, including MUTEK, the International Festival of Films on Art, and Espace [IM] Media, as well as internationally – International Short Film Festival of Berlin (Germany), Transmediale (Germany), MUTEK (Argentina, Japan, and Mexico), Lab30 (Germany) , Finnish Contemporary Art Fair (Finland), and ISEA2020. Her work is part of the Hydro-Québec Collection.

    Matière. Dans la profondeur de la chair, la délicatesse des machines invasives, 2025

    Durée 18 min.

    Propriété de l’artiste

    Crédits :

    Nelly-Eve Rajotte: Conception, Scénarisation, Réalisation, Montage, Production, Intelligence artificielle (AI)

    Simran Dewan: Direction photo et étalonnage

    Henri Carreau: Modélisation et Animation 3D

    David Kristian : Musique et Design Sonore

    André Simard : Mixage et Mastering

    Équipe Tournage CHUM

    Frederic Boivin : directeur de production 

    Vincent Ménard : assistant de production

    Catherine lefebvre : 1ier assistante caméra

    Vincent Plourde-Lavoie : Chef machiniste

    Conseil des arts du Canada 

    L’artiste remercie le Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) ainsi qu’au Dr Franck Vandenbroucke-Menu, chef du Service de chirurgie hépatobiliaire, pancréatique et de transplantation hépatique du CHUM.