Visitors to the exhibition The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk will encounter mannequins whose faces are brought to life by video. These surprising figures, all of them dressed by Gaultier, soliloquize, observe in silence and sometimes even break into song. This very special technique of projecting video onto a three-dimensional mask combines technology and craft, with the actor's own video image projected onto his or her sculpted head.

The technique was developed more than fifteen years ago by Denis Marleau with UBU, his Montreal theatre company. Marleau also created Les aveugles, which has been touring the world since 2002. In this show, there are no live actors on scene; instead, there are twelve video masks depicting the same two actors. It was through this influential production and a second show, Une fête pour Boris at the Avignon Festival in 2010, that Jean Paul Gaultier discovered the Quebec director's work.

For this project, initiated by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Marleau, Stéphanie Jasmin and their team created the mannequins, whose quirky, poetic or joyful presence captures the spirit of installation art. Participants include performers Ève Salvail, Francisco Randez, Melissa Auf der Maur, Virginie Coosa and Suzie Leblanc, who contribute something of their own artistic process to the fascinating world of Jean Paul Gaultier.

Others who are lending their face and voice include Christiane Pasquier, Éric Bruneau, Évelyne Rompré, Hélène Brunet, Kami Lofgren, Marina Eva, Mélanie Demers, Noémie Godin-Vigneault, Phillipe Racine and évelyne Brochu.