Beginning April 29, clients of Baked Café will have a chance to admire the mysterious and attractive work of painter Josée Fortin.

Her work is well-known in the Francophone community but this exhibition is the first opportunity for Fortin to show her work to the entire public of Whitehorse.

As an artist, Fortin puts a lot of herself into her work, and it is obvious: her work is unique, authentic and dark, but also joyful in their compositions.

Indeed this expressive, sensitive and direct young woman paints the expression of herself in the colour, the costumes and the hairstyles of the women represented on canvas.

“I am used to representing only women in my paintings. For some reason I’m not ready to represent men yet,” she says.

Fortin has the challenge of being a painter and also a full-time educator.

“My aim is to work five hours a week on my painting. Sometimes I can go three weeks without touching my brushes and then, suddenly I have inspiration and time and I can put a lot of time on my art.

“Surprisingly, at the end, I produce a lot. My house is like a museum; I have work everywhere,” she says.

“My inspiration comes from different sources but it happens often that I have an image in my head and it’s going to stick around until I decide to put this image on canvas.”

Symbolism is really present in Fortin’s work, with the images fixed as portraits.

“People say that my work is naive because of the shape of my characters. I’m self-taught and I just work from my intuition. I draw and paint the shapes of the bodies the way that I think they have to be represented,” she says.

Fortin’s work is surrealistic and symbolic; her themes are developed around sex, nature and loneliness.

A multidisciplinary artist who also works in writing and music, Fortin will be at the Baked Café on April 29 at 6 pm. It’s an opportunity to meet a great artist and a colourful woman.

As you probably heard, it’s V-Day time: Yukon RebELLEs present the The Vagina Monologues on April 29 and 30.

Don’t miss the chance to see the third presentation of this bilingual event in the Yukon. The Vagina Monologues is an occasion to say “no more” to sexual violence against women.

In 1996, Eve Ensler created a play in order to provoke a new discussion and depict a new portrait of women’s sexual reality, based on 200 interviews she conducted about sexual abuse.

The Vagina Monologues gave women the opportunity to say something about how they live with rape, violence and sexual abuse. Following the play’s original run in New York, Ensler realized that the project had to keep running so that more women could express themselves everywhere.

Every year in February, March and April, she allows organizations around the world to stage performances of The Vagina Monologues in order to sensitize the public to the sexual reality of women in many countries and to end sexual violence.

The money raised from every performance goes to the V-day organizations and is invested in a different cause every year. So far, about 5,400 versions of The Vagina Monologues have been presented around the world.

Here in Whitehorse, about 13 actresses from different backgrounds will perform in the 2011 Yukon version of The Vagina Monologues.

The event will serve as a fund-raiser for Kaushee’s Place, and Yukon RebELLES will also raise money to send a Yukon representative to the next Pan-Canadian Youth Feminist Gathering in Winnipeg.

Performances will take place April 29 at 7:30 pm and April 30 at 2 pm and 7:30 pm at the Old Fire Hall.

There are definitely several options for how you can spend the evening of April 29.

At 8 pm, at the Yukon Art Centre, master violinist Gilles Apap and the Transylvanian Mountain Boys will perform their legendary rearrangements of classical pieces and folk tunes for violin, double-bass, viola and guitar.

As part of a North American tour, the group’s Whitehorse performance will provide an opportunity to see one of the best violin players in the world.

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