Biography
Tommy Bourque is a mixed media, installation, and digital artist currently living and working in Edmonton, Alberta. He was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario and completed his Honours BA in Fine Arts (with Distinction) at the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario) in 2017. For his BA capstone undergraduate thesis work, Bourque was the recipient of both the Curator’s Choice Award (awarded by University of Waterloo Art Gallery Curator) as well as the Mayor’s Choice Award for the Region of Waterloo Public Art Program (awarded by the Mayor of Waterloo). He then went on to complete his MFA in Visual Arts at Western University in London, Ontario in 2021.
Taking cues from Julia Kristeva’s notions on the abject, ideas of beauty derived by William Hogarth and Edmond Burke, Romanticism, and early 20th century surrealist ideologies, Bourque explores monstrosity and speculative worlding through his carefully crafted sculptures, experimental video, and immersive installations—all physical, digital, and hybrid. Bourque’s work offers his viewers an all-inclusive experience which proposes diverse perceptions of reality and identity. Through digitally capturing and importing in his practice natural bodies, landscapes, and/or objects, Bourque creates works on screen that exhibit multiple dualities between two worlds (the natural and the digital) and that showcase the complex relationship that their simultaneous existences present, celebrate, and challenge.
Bourque’s current work is moving in the direction of exploring LGBTQIA+ histories, representations, and identities.