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An Laurence is a treasure of the Montreal underground art scene. Her work is transcendental—both in its relation to traditional conceptions of art and its effect on those lucky enough to encounter it. A classical guitarist by training, Laurence’s bold artistic experimentation and community-oriented philosophy are truly inspiring.
As a young child, Laurence showed talent in both singing and drawing, but it wasn’t until high school that she discovered her passion for guitar. After high school, Laurence opted to study music in CEGEP where she was formally exposed to classical guitar. Immediately, she developed a profound passion for the elegance of the art form, choosing to move from her childhood home in Quebec City to continue her studies at Université de Montreal. At UdeM, she took courses in experimental and contemporary sound production and, more importantly, found her confidence as a performer. Having graduated with a music degree in classical guitar, Laurence enrolled in a graduate program in Arts & Technology at UdeM where she rounded out her artistic arsenal with knowledge of sound and film production, as well as visual and interactive coding skills. With this impressive and wide-ranging skill set, Laurence has chosen to pursue a career as a professional artist in Montreal, channeling her talents toward creation, curation, and community engagement.
At the fiery core of An Laurence’s artistic spirit, two essential elements—her musical talent and her value of collaborative creation—stir together, lashing and embracing one another to form something truly magnificent. Her two studio albums, Almost Touching (2022) and All We’re Made of Is Borrowed (2023), are shining products of this intermingling; both prominently featuring classical guitar, the records are equally experimental as they are emotional.
When asked about the creative process that led to the conception of her second collaborative album, All We’re Made of Is Borrowed, Laurence replied that it is "almost impossible to remember who wrote what,” a result of the intense week-long collaborative writing retreat that led to the realization of the project, during which time Laurence and her colleague Kim Farris-Manning exchanged their unfinished writings between one another, adding clauses and verses to each other's pages as they each saw fit. This fluid, organic process of creation was aided by the use of automatic writing, a practice that Laurence has experimented with on several occasions in the making of both Almost Touching and All We’re Made of Is Borrowed. Although automatic writing – that is to say the exercise of ‘turning off the internal editor in one’s mind,’ so to speak – is not a method that An has used much outside of these projects, it perfectly epitomizes her approach to artistic creation.
Laurence described her approach to making art as one that depends heavily on instinct as opposed to rational calculation. In her own words, she strives to avoid “thinking thematically” in the early stages of creation, rather preferring to begin her process with a more abstract idea or image, working to “expand it in a way that is more complex” in the later stages. For her, the most important thing is to begin from within, as, for Laurence, the very purpose of creation is to “try to understand yourself.” In Laurence’s mind, subtext—whether philosophical or political—is formulated only as an afterthought.
Nonetheless, much of Laurence’s work is in fact deeply political. In her view, "being apolitical is actually strongly political," compelling her to channel her artistic endeavors to be a force for positive social change. As curator at Quai 516, Maison de la Culture de Verdun for the past year, she has worked to address the lack of diversity and representation in Montreal’s public arts spaces. The vast majority of these spaces, being financed entirely by government organizations, have struggled with issues of underrepresentation and insufficient funding. As Laurence notes, these spaces are overrun by the "dominant culture" and lack diverse voices, particularly those of people of color.
As such, over the course of her curatorship, Laurence has sought to address these inequities by programming events that have amplified underrepresented and marginalized voices. In October 2024, Laurence wrapped up a major project—a fashion runway show that featured the works of Palestinian, Maya, Anishinaabe, and Wendat designers, along with one Drag artist. The models spanned all ages, reflecting Laurence’s steadfast commitment to fostering inclusivity within Montreal's art scene. Overall, the event was a glorious celebration of diversity fostered chiefly by Laurence’s choice to prioritize cross-cultural representation among both the designers and models.
Laurence’s multi-disciplinary exhibition How Far Can We See Within and performance Come Closer also include potent political messaging. Laurence, who was adopted from China at a very young age, feels that the narrative regarding her adoption imposed upon her by the Western context in which she has grown up has been inaccurate and harmful. As such, she seeks to portray in these works a more authentic understanding of international adoption processes, specifically the ways in which they work to harm both the adoptee and their biological families. Speaking on the inspiration for Come Closer, Laurence said,
“The people who lose children to international adoption are usually people who are very uneducated, quite poor—who have very little resources. So those are people whose stories we never hear. So to tell those stories was also […] very important to me.”
Through our conversation it became clear that these works are also intensely personal for Laurence, allowing her to reconcile issues of her own identity. For as long as Laurence can remember, she has struggled to produce for herself a comprehensive understanding of her identity resulting from her lack of connection to her biological family and place of birth. However, after encountering a book recounting first-hand experiences of Chinese families who lost children to the birth-planning policy, Laurence was inspired to rewrite the stories in her own voice and perform them in front of a live audience. She deeply believes that “identity is built through the eyes of others” and so by sharing these embodied stories of familiar experience, she hoped to finally connect to this previously nebulous aspect of her identity. Laurence shared that she always likes to ask herself a guiding question in the process of creating her art. This piece, guided by the ever-so pressing question of “how do you integrate yourself with yourself when you don’t have any traces of your past life?” is answered for Laurence through that which she loves most: Performance.
For Almost Touching, Laurence asked herself an equally urgent question: “How [does one] deal with the ever-fleeting feeling of existence?” Although this question guides the composition and lyricism of the entire record, the first track, entitled “Artificial Light,” serves as a helpful microcosm in understanding the broader themes of the album. The piece, composed by Amy Brandon, is built upon the foundation of a classical guitar recording mutilated by the power of digital sound design—it is a “distorted ghost…that embodies this anger of it not being what you wanted,” as Laurence put it. Atop these eerie electronic vibrations, Laurence strums the same phrase in repetition, this time undistorted. The resulting masterpiece traps the listener between the two parallel components of the track, an experience that Laurence describes as a “never ending cycle” that engenders the “feeling of running to catch something or to evade something, but you don’t know which one.” The music forces the listener into an uncomfortable, liminal space—a sinister void with no floor or ceiling. Trapped in this space, we grope desperately to find our footing; yet the further out we reach the further we get from certainty. As such, we are forced simply to sit in the discordant beauty and feel—but not touch.
In an age in which young people are listening to hyper-pop on vinyl and Bob Dylan through Bluetooth headphones, An Laurence’s masterful yet jarring melding of classical and modern mediums serves as a perfect backdrop to our current age of existential bewilderment. It is clear to me as I hope it is to you that An Laurence is an artist of today, through and through.
Edited by: Annabella Lawlor & Noam Boussard
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