23.09.2025

Prix Yan Giguère 2025 — Dom Di Libero

The Atelier committee is proud to award the Yan Giguère Prize to Dom Di Libero!

Dom will receive a one-year residency at Atelier CLARK, along with technical and material support. Her residency will conclude with a public event.

Dom Di Libero is an artist and woodworker based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal, QC), whose practice explores how objects shape spatial and emotional experience through their making. Working across sculpture, craft, and installation, she uses material experimentation to investigate memory, devotion, and the rituals embedded in making. Her recent work draws on traditional folk crafts to explore queerness, spirituality, and care. 

Alongside Reb Black, Dom co-founded Shop Talk, a queer woodworking collective that fosters accessible, collaborative making spaces for underrepresented woodworkers. This unconventional education collective facilitates tool literacy amongst those typically left out of traditional wood shop environments through hands-on workshops. Since 2018, Dom has worked with her artistic partner and best friend, Emily Allan, under the moniker Studio Rat to create inflatable dreamscapes from discarded materials that present a commentary on the irreversible binding of plastic in our environments and everyday experiences. 

Dom has exhibited at Bois Magique No.2 at Espace Transmission (2025) and was a juror for Bois Magique No.3. She holds a degree in Interior Design from Toronto Metropolitan University (2019), a DVS in Cabinetmaking (2022) and has recently studied Tramp Art at the North House Folk School in Grand Marais, Minnesota. Dom has developed and facilitated numerous workshops and curricula ranging from “Inflatables 101” with Studio Rat to “Wiggly Forms” with Shop Talk, guided by a commitment to decommercialized knowledge sharing and community-driven learning.

For the second consecutive year, the Yan Giguère Prize aims to support artists and craftspeople working with wood, to recognize excellence in the use of this material, to foster the building of a community of wood artists and artisans in Montréal, and to contribute to the visibility of Atelier CLARK.

Through this prize, CLARK aims to:

• Provide a professional creative context within a community with a high level of expertise in artistic and/or craft-based woodworking;
• Foster the creation of networks among wood artists and/or artisans in Montréal;
• Support and promote the practices of wood-based artists and/or craftspeople.

Atelier CLARK’s mission is to support and encourage Montréal-based artists, craftspeople, and visual arts students by providing affordable access to a woodworking and carpentry studio. The Atelier team oversees the development of artistic projects, fulfills commissioned work—such as exhibition furniture, false frames, and transport crates—offers consulting services, and provides materials at competitive prices. These services are also available to institutions, organizations, and cultural workers within the Montréal community.