La Voie lactée

La Voie lactée (French: [la vwa lak.te]; transl. "The Milky Way") is a public artwork by the Canadian artist Geneviève Cadieux. Since its unveiling in 1992, it has stood on the roof of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MACM), in the Quartier des spectacles district of Montreal. It consists of a billboard-style light panel depicting, in extreme close-up, female lips wearing red lipstick. The lips, which show signs of aging, are those of Cadieux's mother.

Cadieux was asked to create La Voie lactée by the MACM on the occasion of the museum's 1992 relocation in a new building on the Place des Arts. Her choice to depict a pair of giant red lips in the sky was inspired by the Man Ray surrealist painting À l’heure de l’observatoire – Les Amoureux. The photograph itself is a detail from one of Cadieux's earlier works. Upon its unveiling, La Voie lactée received critical acclaim. It was gifted by Cadieux to the MACM in 1995, along with a colour transparency allowing for new prints.

"La Voie lactée" is French for "The Milky Way", but many interpretations of the artwork argue that the title is a double entendre. Its homophone "La Voix lactée" translates to "The Milky Voice". Cadieux herself associated her artwork with the themes of voice, language and motherhood. Sexuality has also often been perceived as a theme. In 2011, Cadieux unveiled a companion piece of La Voie lactée in a station of the Paris Métro and titled it La Voix lactée. It is a mosaic reproducing the same photograph of her mother's lips.

La Voie lactée is a symbol of the MACM and one of the key artworks in its collection. As one of the most well-known public artworks in Montreal, it is also considered an icon of the city.