PAS Matt Steffich Jurors’ Choice Award recipient Jeannette Sirois shares broader reflections on her artistic practice, research process, and the ideas that continue to shape her work. Her insights offer a thoughtful look at artistic development, intention, and the evolving conversations emerging through PAS.

  1. When you first learned you’d received the PAS Jurors’ Choice Award, what was the initial thought or feeling that stayed with you? The first feeling was complete surprise, followed by a quiet sense of gratitude. What stayed with me was the sense that “At the Table: Lorraine” had space to be received with care. Receiving the award made it possible to feel that the work could be encountered not only as a portrait, but as a work engaging questions of presence, authority, and who is permitted to occupy certain spaces.
  2. The Parallel Art Show creates space for a wide range of practices and voices. What did it mean to you to have your work recognized within this context? PAS creates space for work that does not need to resolve itself neatly or conform to a single aesthetic or market expectation. Having “At the Table: Lorraine” recognized in that context mattered because the work is intentionally quiet, slow, and restrained. It felt like recognition of the thinking behind the work-the decisions around posture, objects, text, and framing-rather than just the surface image.
  3. Was there a moment during the making of your work when you felt it begin to take on new meaning or direction? The work was never solely about portraiture. It began with questions around who is invited to the table and who is excluded, and it developed through research into bureaucratic systems, institutional spaces, and the visual language of authority. As those elements became more deliberate, the table shifted from a setting to a structural device-standing in for rooms where decisions are made and where queer people have historically been absent.
  4. How does receiving this award influence the way you think about your practice moving forward-creatively, professionally, or otherwise? It reinforces my trust in the slow, deliberate nature of this practice. The award doesn’t redirect the work, but it affirms the importance of its restraint, tension, and refusal to simplify how systems are navigated by queer people. That affirmation strengthens my commitment to continuing the series with the same level of care and insistence.
  5. For visitors encountering your work through PAS, what do you hope they feel, question, or carry with them after leaving the exhibition? I hope the work creates a sense of quiet tension-from the compressed space, the uninterrupted text, and the stillness of the sitter. The work is rooted in queer experience, and I want viewers to reflect on who is typically invited to the table and who is asked to wait outside it. If the work lingers as a question about authority, presence, and recognition rather than offering resolution, then it has done what it needs to do.