Two local artists chosen for Gatineau's 2026 creative residencies

Tashi Farmilo

A writer probing the boundaries of intimacy and a theatre artist staging a séance gone wrong will headline Gatineau's two artist residencies for 2026. Karina Pawlikowski takes the writer-in-residence post for a literary project titled La couleur des murs, while Julien Morissette lands the creation residency for a stage work called La dernière séance.

The two recipients are familiar collaborators. Pawlikowski and Morissette co-created the audio and stage work Là où la poussière se dépose and Les amours extraordinaires, projects that helped build their reputations on opposite sides of the writing and sound-art divide.

Karina Pawlikowski, writer in residence

Pawlikowski is an artist and author who works where visual art and literature meet, using writing, voice and drawing to probe the boundaries that frame emotional and relational life. She came up through the visual arts in Gatineau and Ottawa before her practice turned toward the written and spoken word.

She co-wrote Là où la poussière se dépose and Les amours extraordinaires, published by Éditions Prise de parole in February 2026, and wrote and conceived the audio fictions Les amours extraordinaires (Radio-Canada OHdio, 2022) and La couleur des murs (Radio-Hull, Centre de production Daïmôn, 2024). Her work has travelled through several creation residencies in Quebec and been shown at cultural institutions at home and abroad, including in Athens, Stockholm and Nantes.

Her Gatineau residency will run in October 2026, during which she will focus on La couleur des murs and take part in programming at the city's municipal library. She will receive a fee of $4,500 for the creation of the project, four workshops and a meeting with the winner of the Prix littéraire Jacques-Poirier, paid through the cultural development agreement between the city and the Quebec government.

Julien Morissette, creation residency at the Théâtre de l'Île

Morissette is an author, director, sound creator and narrator whose work digs into memory, territory, collective imagination and the machinery of performance itself. His practice sits at the crossing of theatre, audio storytelling, immersive work and hybrid forms. His stage productions have been presented at the National Arts Centre's Théâtre français and the Centre du Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui, as well as on European stages through festivals and tours in France.

He is also a notable figure in Quebec's audio scene. In 2024 he received the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec's award for Artist of the Year in the Outaouais, a $10,000 prize, and he co-founded the production house Transistor Média and a festival devoted to digital radio. His podcast credits include Hantées and Synthèses.

Morissette’s residency stretches from September 2026 to January 2027 and is split into two phases. The first comes with a $5,000 grant, 150 hours of access to the Théâtre de l'Île in September 2026, professional mentorship from the organization L'Avant-première, and a technical budget. The second carries a $10,000 grant to continue the work, plus seven days at the Espace René-Provost to present the piece before an audience, a technical budget, promotional services and, depending on availability, access to rehearsal space.

La dernière séance is an immersive theatre project that probes the line between narrative, illusion, memory and presence, structured as an investigation carried out live in front of the audience. A journalist who specializes in the paranormal sets out to reconstruct the final session of a medium who has disappeared. Inside an abandoned house he finds a table covered with jars, glass bells and strange objects, and as he tries to work out what they do, he gradually triggers a mechanism that loosens the rational frame. Voices surge up, images appear, the objects seem to come alive, and the performance becomes that final séance.

Miron points to a deep local talent pool

Isabelle N. Miron, president of the Commission des arts, de la culture, des lettres et du patrimoine and city councillor for the Orée-du-Parc district, framed both appointments as evidence of the strength of Gatineau's arts scene. "The Écrivain en résidence program is now in its 18th edition, and this year's appointment proves once again that there is a great deal of talent on Gatineau's literary scene," she said. "The theatre creation residency is more recent, in its 4th edition, but it is just as important for supporting our own artists. I invite the whole community to discover Karina Pawlikowski's wonderful writing and Julien Morissette's future play, which is sure to be captivating."