Hayeur used special equipment to shoot over/underwater photography in polluted waterways, creating evocative images from the unusual perspective of the waterline that were then exhibited on four billboards on major thoroughfares across New Orleans.

Born in Montreal, Isabelle Hayeur is known for large-format digital montages her videos and her site-specific installations. Both appealing and alarming, her work presents vast landscapes that denounce the no-man’s-lands that contemporary civilization allows to emerge. Her work has been exhibited in places such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago (MoCP) and the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin and at Akbank Sanat in Instanbul.

“Knowing in advance that Southern Louisiana had experienced environmental disasters, spending so much time at A Studio in the Woods made me experience something different…because I saw dying and disappearing ecosystems, but I also saw that it was possible to change that non-harmonious relationship. The whole place: the house, the land and the people at the Woods serves as an example for people to see that another relationship is possible.” – Isabelle Hayeur