Queen Of Nowhere, Kourtney Roy

The Canadian photographer Kourtney Roy was born in Northern Ontario in 1981. Intrigued by the possibility of creating a tragic mythology of the self, she conjures an intimate universe pervaded by both wonder and mystery. Her photographer's eye is drawn to places and settings whose lyrical qualities underscore the sublime banality of everyday life.                                        

Roy's studies in photography, at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and later at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, inspired her to develop her finicky aesthetic, which lends itself particularly well to both glossy paper and film. Roy works extensively as an independent photographer/filmmaker in the art world. Instilled with a dark sense of humor, taking their clues as much from the grotesque nature of seemingly placid settings as from the tensions simmering just under the surface, her photographs have garnered many prizes, including the Prix Picto in 2007, The Emily Award in Canada in 2012 and the Prix Carte Blanche PMU/Le Bal in 2013 and the Pernod Ricard Carte Blanche in 2018.                                     

Roy's work has been exhibited widely in France, but also abroad. She has been seen at the Planche(s) Contact Festival in Deauville in 2012, The Portraits Festival in Vichy in 2015 and at Le Bal in 2014 and a solo show at Paris photo in 2018, among other events and venues. Internationally Roy's photographs have been featured at exhibitions in China, as well as Italy, Switzerland, The United States, Australia, the Moscow Photo Biennale in 2017 and at the Incadaqués International Photo Festival in Spain in 2019. 

Roy has also released several publications on her work including an accompanying artist book to Le Bal's exhibition Ils pensent déjà que je suis folle (2014) and the artist's books Enter as Fiction (2015) and Survivalist Failures (2022) published by Filigrane Editions, as well as Northern Noir published by Editions La Pionnière. Also California is edited by Editions Louis Vuitton and was released in 2016 and The Tourist, published by André Frére Editions was released in 2020. Queen of Nowhere is her latest book published by IIKKI.

Published by IIKKI
Hardcover 
132 pages
220 x 240 mm
ISBN 9782957201860