RACHELLE BUSSIÈRES
Rachelle Bussières is a French-Canadian artist born in Quebec City in 1986. She lives and works in New York, where her practice explores perception, time and nature. She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has participated in several international residencies, including the Banff Centre, the Penumbra Foundation, the Headlands Center for the Arts and Silver Art Projects. A finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Prize, she won second place in the Museum of Contemporary Photography's Snider Prize and has received numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts.
The practice of Rachelle Bussières moves between photography and installation, using light-sensitive paper as a site of duration, touch, and transformation. Her practice uses light-sensitive paper as a site of duration, touch, and transformation. Working with lumen printing, she exposes silver gelatin paper to controlled and environmental light over periods ranging from seconds to several days. Recent works extend this process through performative and physical gesture, often at a larger scale: masking, contact, rolling, and movement shape the image directly, allowing gesture to register as trace, interruption, and rhythm. Photography moves beyond fixed representation and becomes an event.
The resulting works carry a luminous, atmospheric presence—familiar yet otherworldly—inviting viewers into a space where light feels both intimate and vast, and where looking slows into sustained attention. Over hours and days, luminous blues, violets, pinks, and warm beiges slowly surface from the paper’s chemistry—color not applied but revealed through time. Each work becomes a temporal encounter: an accumulation of light, movement, and material response in which perception remains unstable and the image stays open, atmospheric, and alive.
Her work is included in several public and private collections, including those of the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), the Arter Contemporary Art Museum (Istanbul) and the SFMOMA library. It has been exhibited in the United States and Canada, as well as in France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Turkey, among other countries, and presented at major international art fairs such as Paris Photo, The Photography Show by AIPAD, Untitled Miami, Enter Art Fair, and Expo Chicago. Finally, Rachelle Bussières is the founder of LUMIERE NYC, a platform dedicated to experimental photographic practices based on light.
SELECTED ARTWORKS
SOLO SHOWS
2025 And the sky will follow. Bigaignon, Paris, France
2025 Daydreams. L'écho des songes. Robertson Arès, Montréal, Canada
2025 Future Fair. Two-person presentation with Katrine Demers. Robertson Arès, New York, USA
2024 Air Index. In conversation with artists Alyssa Minahan, Yyvette Hamilton, Svetlana Bailey, Armelle Tulunda, Melanie King, Yann Pocreau, et al, Equivalentbehaviour, London, UK
2024 Signal ("spotlight" alongside Sophie Victoria). Robertson Arès, Montréal, Canada
2023 Les rythmes circadiens. Galerie Alexandre Motulsky-Falardeau, Quebec City, Canada
2021 sipping air. Melanie Flood Projects, Portland, USA
2020 (un)objectively. Curator: Leandro Villaro, Penumbra Foundation, New York, USA
2020 In Light. Conditions of Time. Johansson Projects, Oakland, USA
2018 Concrete Utopia. Two-person show with Courtney Sennish. Johansson Projects, Oakland, USA
2016 Strata. Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco, USA
2015 Monument Mineral. Silver Projects, Brooklyn, USA
COLLECTIONS
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, USA
Arter Contemporary Art Museum, Istanbul, Turkey
Penumbra Foundation New York, USA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Library and Archives, USA
Facebook, Mural Commission, Sunnyvale, USA
Four Seasons Hotel, San Francisco, USA
The Wing, San Francisco, USA
Brookfield Properties, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Microsoft, San Francisco, USA
Atelier Noua, Bodø, Norway
Instagram Inc., San Francisco, USA
Private collections, USA, Canada, France, Turkey
GROUP SHOWS
2025 Paris Photo with Bigaignon, Paris, France
2025 I Need More Time. Curator: Oğuz Karakütük, Arter Contemporary Art Museum, Istanbul, Turkey
2025 Sotto la Luce. Bigaignon x Rhinoceros, Rhinoceros Gallery, Rome, Italy
2025 Still Point. Curator: Caitlin Monachino (The Aldrich Museum), Ortega y Gasset, Brooklyn, NY, USA
2025 Enter Art Fair with Robertson Arès, Copenhagen, Danemark
2025 Elsewhere. Rivalry Projects, Buffalo, USA
2025 EXPO Chicago with Robertson Arès, Navy Pier, Chicago, USA
2025 Foire Plural with Robertson Arès, Montréal, Canada
2024 Art Toronto with Robertson Arès, Toronto, Canada
2024 Tall Shadows in Short Order. Curator: Will Hutnick, Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY, USA
2023 The Collective. Curator: Visionary Projects, High Line Nine Gallery, New York, USA
2023 ICP Faculty Show. International Center of Photography, New York, USA
2023 Accrochage collectif for “Art et Science : Quel Rapports + Science-fiction”. Curated by Lucas Bourlot. École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts à la Villa Arson, Nice, France
2022 High Plains (with Blaise Rosenthal and Andy Vogt). Johansson Projects, Oakland, USA
2022 When Light Becomes Form: Processing Photography. Curator: Kevin Chen, San Francisco University, USA
2021 On Colored Shadows (with Myeongsoo Kim and Suzanna Zak). Rubber Factory, New York, USA
2021 Untitled Art with Johansson Projects, Miami, USA
2021 Silver Art Group Exhibition. Silver Art Projects at 4 World Trade Center, New York, USA
2021 Community Garden. Johansson Projects, Oakland, USA
2020 Beach Break Miami. With Johansson Projects, Virtual Miami Exhibition, USA
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2020 Printed Publics. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA
2020 Echoes of the Bauhaus Cast Long Shadows. Curator: Hanna Regev, Ruth's Table, San Francisco, USA
2020 At the Edge of Both. Curators: Serrah Russell and Zach Bent, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, USA
2019 Surface Area. Curator: Noah Doely, Marin Gallery, Waterloo, USA
2019 LA Art Book Fair. with Night Diver Press, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles,USA
2019 Object, Space, Action. Soil Gallery, Seattle, WA, USA2018 Bloomfield, Bussières, Webb (with Rebecca Norris Webb and Debra Bloomfield). Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco, USA
2018 Waiting for the Sun. Sim Gallery, Reykjavik, Island
2018 After Tomorrow. Curator: Candace Huey, Residence of the Consul General of France, San Francisco, USA
2018 Landscapes. Curator: Allie Haeusslein, The Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, USA
2017 Beneath The Salt. Curator: Marianne Bjormyr, The Culture House, Stormen, Bodo, Norway
2017 AIPAD with Robert Koch Gallery Park Avenue Armory, New York City, USA
2017 Insights. Curators: Alexander Montagne-Sparey and Allie Haeusslein, Fort Mason, San Francisco, USA
2016 EXPO Chicago with Robert Koch Gallery. Navy Pier, Chicago, USA
2016 Paris Photo with Robert Koch Gallery. Grand Palais, Paris, France
2016 Corte Madera's Centennial Art Exhibition. Curator: Nolan Sheehan Jankowski, Corte Madera, États-Unis
2016 I Never Learned the Song I Always Sing. Curator: Brion Nuda Rosch, MSP, San Francisco, USA
2016 I’ll Tell You Later. Curator: Joanna Szupinska-Myers, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, USA
2016 Fine Words Butter No Parsnips However Fine Parsnips Can Butter Words. Present Company, NY, USA
2015 Photography Show AIPAD with Robert Koch Gallery Park Avenue Armory, New York City, USA
2015 Paris Photo with Robert Koch Gallery. Grand Palais, Paris, France
2015 Institute of Contemporary Art San José auction. Institute of Contemporary Art, San José, USA
2014 Pretty Raw. Curator: Linda Connor, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria
2014 MFA NOW. Juror: Donna Napper, Root Division, San Francisco, USA