Pierre Bruneau has been dedicated to mail art for 26 years. An activity so original and diversified that the Musée de la Poste, in Paris, granted him an artistic residency. The Montreal artist creates and organizes creative workshops that lead him to awaken young French, Montrealers and even Africans to the art of sending beautiful mail by post. We met him in his studio.
He studied graphic communications and theatrical scenography, but one day in December 1996, Pierre Bruneau took up mail art so he could pay for his studio. Subscribers (for $150 per month), friends and collectors began receiving his works monthly. The activity being a success, he has been pursuing it for 26 years. His creations, often phosphorescent, are inspired by his life and current events. Works of all shapes that require drawing, printing and DIY when the shipment is… a small sculpture.
The postal work is therefore sometimes original, and, fortunately, Canada Post always accepts it. “With the post office, many things are possible,” says Pierre Bruneau. You don’t even have to put the stamp on the top right! Canada Post told me you can mail anything, as long as there’s enough postage. You can discover all his mail art works, circa 1800!, by visiting his website.
In 2020-2021, Pierre Bruneau exhibited his work at the Maison de la culture Janine-Sutto. Post the art! was both a retrospective exhibition, an artistic residency and creative workshops with schools and community organizations. With the aim, in particular, of breaking the isolation that we all suffered during the pandemic. “We also collaborated with an integrated university health and social services center [CIUSS] to organize workshops in youth centers, he says. Young people wrote to intellectually handicapped people and they wrote back to them. Following this experience, I contacted the Musée de la Poste to extend it to France. »
Pierre Bruneau’s artistic residency in Paris lasted from August 15 to December 15. There he continued his mediation activities in mail art. With the Musée de la Poste, he paired middle school students from three Parisian schools with Montreal students of the same level in order to exchange, by post, mostly phosphorescent works. Some 150 students participated in these exchanges. “The most fascinating thing is that some students had never written a single letter in their life! said Pierre Bruneau.
He also presented seven workshops in a primary school in a popular district of Paris. “Two of the classes took the opportunity to send mail art to Senegalese students with whom they had a newspaper project,” he says. 180 students took part. At the same time, Pierre Bruneau drew inspiration from the Musée de la Poste’s collection of postal items, including letters from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Jean Cocteau and aviator Jean Mermoz, to create new postal artwork.
In his studio in the Grover building, in the Centre-Sud district, Pierre Bruneau has placed some of his works on the wall, which combine sculpture, drawing and phosphorescence. Because if mail art represents three or four days of work per month, the rest of his time is devoted to his large-format phosphorescent works that work with black light or in complete darkness.
Pierre Bruneau is also continuing his work on phosphorescence. When we went to his studio, he had just finished a work on moucharabieh, these openwork partitions that we see in mosques so that women can see without being seen. A complex work, done with a brush of phosphorescent paint. “I’m a bit of a maniac,” he said.
Next fall, Pierre Bruneau will return to Paris. The Postal Museum wishes to continue its project of creative workshops. “We plan to offer at least 10 workshops in middle and high schools,” he says. The collaboration of the Maison de la culture Janine-Sutto will make it possible to organize other Franco-Quebec exchanges. The museum also wants to develop an intergenerational component that would involve schools and accommodation centers. »
In addition, he was invited by the Center Les Récollets, in Paris, and by the Maison de l’Architecture to create an installation at the chapel of the Couvent des Récollets, as part of the 23rd Nuit blanche de Paris, in June 2024. He is also preparing another installation work for the basilica cathedral of Saint-Denis, in the suburbs of Paris, in collaboration with the French artist Lamyne M.
