Marie Rioux Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Marie Rioux: Some artworks are activist. My own work, without being in the service of a cause, sometimes is. Artists are sensitive witnesses to their times. With their creativity, they have the opportunity to grasp the social issues of today’s world from unusual, striking, unexpected and sometimes even dissonant angles. Their art enables them to bring out their personal thoughts in various ways. The social engagement of a work of art exists in its relationship with a particular context, as well as in the artist’s intent. It is thus connected to a precise moment in time. If taken out of this temporality, all that remains of an artwork would be aesthetics and memory. Through their work committed artists share their convictions and their interpretation of the meaning of people’s lives and of events. But artists can choose whether or not to take up this role in the face of our shifting and turbulent world. As our age is one of great upheavals of every kind, our contemporaries are becoming increasingly aware that humanity is headed straight towards unrelenting destinies. As a picture is worth a thousand words, the impact of works of visual art which strike the imagination and hit a nerve in the audience can significantly raise the awareness of people receptive to these issues. The painting “Le sang des innocents” (“The Blood of Innocents”) refers to the discovery of a clandestine cemetery on the grounds of a Catholic residential school for Indigenous children in western Canada. It is an editorial work on the atrocities committed in the cultural genocide of First Nations peoples ordered by the government of Canada and carried out by the Church.