Draft:Nicole Fournier

NIcole Fournier (legal name), alias NIcole McDonald-Fournier (artist name since 2018), born 24 February 1966, is a visual artist and interdisciplinary artist, living in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She got international scholarly recognition in 2012, invited by the author and artist LInda Weintraub, to be one of the artist in her publication, To Life!: Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet, Copyright Date: 2012. Edition: 1 Published by: University of California This publication has become an important book and reference "To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet documents the burgeoning eco art movement from A to Z" The chapter on Nicole Fournier is titled "Poly Agriculture", features Fournier's artwork, title "Live Dining", which is created by ecological methods of agriculture, such as permaculture, meanwhile it is about creating an outdoor space and place - an artistic installation that has integrated a kitchen-dining room, to prepare, cook and dine, right in the land space of growing crops, a small agriculture plot, which is a poly agriculture installation. Poly agriculture means where a biodiversity of cultures - plants - are planted. For "Live Dining" Fournier planted in a non-linear method, instead in circular and mixed method, that is not practical, and looks messy, but is highly efficient health wise, as it imitates nature, as with biomimicry. There were over 50 species of vegetables, herbs, native plants and plants considered weeds, annuals and perrennials, fruit trees etc, planted and that invited themselves (corn, beans, squash, spinach, letture, yarrow, mint, marigolds, basil, tomatoes, dandelions, nettles, gil over the ground, violets, wild strawberry, sow thistle, wild carrot, peppers, cosmos, goldenrod, asters, campagnola, lemon balm, motherwort, oregano, apple, cherry and pear tres, raspberries, topinambour, etc.). "Live Dining" began in 2005, in the artist Nicole Fournier's residential backyard in Ville Saint-Laurent, now called a borough of the City of Montreal - Ville de Montreal. She invited her family and friends and neighbors to dine with her, in this outdoor poly agriculture, participatory performance and installation space. Her artwork has been defined in many way, and fall into the category of environmental art, ecological art, performance art, which includes and is conceived to invite the participation, so as a participatory performance artwork, as public art in the environment, as a living installation sculpture.

The artwork "Live Dining" and Nicole Fournier's land - garden of biodiversity and permacutlure is an outdoor studio and site for exhibitions and her home, have also been featured in the book At Home: Talks with Canadian Artists about Place and Practice by author and artist Lezli Rubin-Kunda,, As well in 2023 and in 2021 her Land, home and art practice are featured in a two reportage in the newspaper Le Devoir, see references: Newspapers below

In 2017 Nicole Fournier was invited by Joshua Schwebel to realize a performance, as part of the exhibition The House of Dust D'Alison Knowles, at the Darling Foundry in Montreal, Quebec, Fournier chose to create a performance with a conceptual quality, a durational performance for 1000 years. This was realized and included importantly the transfering / installing the artwork "EmballeToi! Clotheine" of digging up plants and used textile, used winter coats, as they performed with and without Fournier, over 4 years (2014–2017). This transfer and installation of a new artwork, became, the title "EmballeToi! Landscape" 1000 years, known in french as "Paysage EmballeToi!" 1000 ans. It evolve grew, plants moved and changed as biodiversity does, and the used winter coats and other synthetic materials hung in the wind and were buried beneath the soil for the biodiversity of plants to do their job of phytoremidiation and the whole soil and plants, do bioremidiation. This conceptual and ecological artwork was an outdoor sculpture, installation, durational and participatory performance that existed from 2017 to 2020, on exhibition as a public art work was documented from 2021 to 2023, in two art magazines, a publication see references below

Born in Beaconsfield, Québec (on the island of Montreal, Quebec), her mother Robin McDonald is from Trinidad and Tobago and immigrated to Quebec, Canada in 1962, and her father Jean-Jacques Fournier is from Mile End, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, her uncle is Ian McDonald (born 18 April 1933) a Caribbean-born poet and writer who describes himself as "Antiguan by ancestry, Trinidadian by birth, Guyanese by adoption, and West Indian by conviction." Nicole Fournier's ancestry on his mother's side is her grandfather, Archie McDonald was Antiguan and Kittitian, and Trinidadian on her grandmother's side. Her uncle Ian McDonald's only novel, The Humming-Bird Tree, first published in 1969, is considered a classic of Caribbean literature.