Sandra Chevrier: portraiture, comic-book masks and the Cages

Sandra Chevrier is a Canadian artist known for the Cages, an evolving body of portraits in which women's faces meet fragments of comic-book imagery. Born in 1983, she studied visual and media arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Her practice brings the intimate presence of a sitter into contact with the public language of superheroes, using that encounter to examine expectations placed on women and the difficulty of living within prescribed identities.

The face and the cage

The comic fragments function as masks around and across the portrait. They introduce scenes of conflict and heroic action while interrupting the viewer's access to the person beneath. The relationship is deliberately unsettled: strength and vulnerability occupy the same image, and the promise of superhuman power accompanies demands that an ordinary person cannot fully satisfy. Chevrier's women retain an emotional presence within that visual pressure, with the eyes providing an especially important point of contact.

StolenSpace's account of her practice traces a material change from attaching torn comics directly to canvases to painting the graphic elements with close realism. That distinction matters to understanding the work. An image can resemble collage while being painted throughout; the appearance of printed fragments does not by itself identify the physical materials of an original.

Building the image

In her 2024 interview, Chevrier explains a process involving masks made from torn comic strips, models, staged photography and subsequent image development. The photographs become references for the painting. Lighting and facial expression help establish the emotional register before the final canvas takes shape. French titles offer another entry into the work, reflecting her first language and adding poetic associations rather than simply naming the visible subject.

Birds on Cages, presented at Harman Projects in New York in 2024, developed the series toward moments of release. The exhibition's account describes masks breaking apart and figures approaching liberation, with remnants of the cage still visible. Freedom appears as an active and complicated process rather than a finished state. This gives the recurring imagery room to change: a familiar facial structure can carry a different relationship between confinement, agency and renewal from one body of work to another.

Painting and work on paper

The Birds on Cages catalogue pairs acrylic paintings on canvas with mixed-media sketches on Bristol vellum paper. Works such as La Cage, je n'ai pas vendu mon âme au diable and La Cage à la lisière des silences sit alongside the separately identified Sketch series. The variety makes clear that the Cages is an artistic framework extending across scales and materials, rather than the name of one uniform print edition. Reading the original medium alongside the image preserves this breadth when following Chevrier's work into editions and publications.

Editions and exhibitions

The artist's official shop, GraffitiPrints' artist page and gallery exhibition archives provide separate routes into Chevrier's work. Individual release records should be used for exact titles, dimensions, edition designations, opening dates and purchase conditions.

Collection guide and exhibition updates

• Cages publication and print families: Standard, Special and Portfolio books; the April and August 2026 main/XL giclées and separate proof offer; Bénédiction ou Malédiction main and leaf editions.
• CLIPPED WINGS at StolenSpace: 15 October–15 November 2026, with the opening reception from 6 p.m. London time on 15 October. The gallery offers interest registration; this does not guarantee an allocation. At the 7 October check, two works had been announced, while a complete sales catalogue and prices remained unpublished in the inspected announcement.
• PALIMPSEST I–VII: seven unique ink-and-watercolour originals announced in June 2026, not an edition of seven identical prints.