Joelle Circé: My work as a Queer Woman Artist

Joelle Circé has been an artist for over 15 years. She has mainly created art about women as seen through the perspective of a woman artist. Her work is made with many intentions: to explore, re-position, and empower female identity; to show how females live in our society; and to break down the stereotypes that often dehumanize the feminine.

Born in Montreal, Canada in the mid-fifties, she went on to study drawing and oil painting. She is not sure that she can enumerate all of the extraordinary women who have been an inspiration to her, but if she has to, then the list would begin with Artemesia Gentileschi along with a ton of women artists throughout history, and would include those brave and courageous women of the Suffragette movement, Rosa Parks, and many of her past and close female friends that she has had the honour to meet since her transition, via her involvement with the V-Day orgs in Montreal and other feminist activist actions she has been a part of.

Creating art which speaks to women’s issues such as abuse, freedom from oppression, body image, our vulvas and yes, even erotica, has all been part and parcel of her evolution. She finds herself impassioned by all things women and female.

She was more directly introduced to lived feminism when she was invited to give a lecture at McGill University by the cast and crew of their V-Day organization. She did this for two years in a row and was named Vagina Warrior. To put it in her words, “I was humbled and honoured, and from that moment on, I knew I was part of the greater sisterhood.”

Joelle is married to her same-sex partner and lives with five cats in the lovely mountains of the Lanaudière region of Quebec, where she paints and, in the summer months, does a fair bit of organic gardening.