On the second floor, the artist continues her research by creating an encounter between two worlds she has worked with for several years: plants and beeswax.
To hand-pick moss, a flower, or a wild herb is a humble, almost ancestral gesture that marks the beginning of a dialogue. Each specimen, gathered with care, carries the imprint of its environment — a season, a light, a soil. The plant becomes much more than a decorative element; it is memory, material, and presence.

These plants meet beeswax, yellow or white, an organic substance with unique properties, meticulously produced by worker bees. Naturally antiseptic, water-repellent, and flexible when heated, beeswax protects, seals, and transforms. It helps preserve the fragility of a leaf or the transparency of a petal, while turning them into sculptural material.

Scientifically, this practice is rooted in an ancient tradition of preserving botanical specimens or creating antique encaustics. But here, it takes on a poetic and contemporary dimension. Each piece becomes a fragment of an inner landscape, a mapping of the living world.

The artist’s work emerges from this alliance of hand, material, and time. A harvest becomes an act of acknowledgment. The application of wax becomes a ritual. The plant is transformed into a witness of the world — fragile, precious, still alive.

Émilie B. Côté lives and works in Témiscamingue. She holds a bachelor's degree in visual arts from Université Laval and has completed several exhibition and artist residency projects in Quebec and Ontario, including at L’Écart, a contemporary art center in Rouyn-Noranda, at the VoArt Center in Val d’Or, at the Rift Exhibition Center in Ville-Marie, and at the Sudbury Alternative Art Fair. A grant recipient from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, she develops an approach where art and science intersect. Her works are part of the collections of the Cégep de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue and the Rouyn-Noranda Art Museum.