Biography
I am a French 49yo artist and researcher, currently completing an MFA in Drawing at Paris College of Art.
I was born in Rodez - Aveyron, France. I am French and speak, write and work fluently in English. I live in Paris with my daughter, Ella, 16 years old. I studied and practiced management, political science, drawing and worked 20 years in digital media. Today, I am an artist, researcher and facilitator.
I situate my art practice at the crossroads of drawing from life/context and performance. I am exploring the use of poetical, low-tech or minimal medium/protocols with a political intention. I am facilitating the queer life drawing workshop Modèle vivant.e in Paris for more than a year now.
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Artist Statement
I position my art practice at the crossroads of drawing, performance and in situ or collective intervention.
Drawing, and in particular drawing from a model, is key to my practice. Perhaps it is for the feeling of humility that goes with the observation or, on the contrary, for the infinite possibilities lying in representation and the magic of it. I am very attracted by the simplicity of this practice which requires neither sophisticated tools nor preparation.
I am facilitating a life drawing workshop called Modèle vivant.e for more than one year now and I have conducted research entitled "Gender trouble in the life room. How to transform life drawing into an emancipatory practice". It aims at identifying the possibilities of renewal and re-appropriation of the life drawing practice by inscribing it in the lineage of feminist workshops. The theoretical and methodological background to both my practice, my research and my teaching lies in what Donna Haraway has analyzed as “situated knowledges” and Jack Halberstam called “queer methodology”. Within the life room, I trust the energy of improvisation for contaminating the drawings.
Establishing rules for a large life drawing workshop allowed me to acknowledge how liberating it can be to reach a collective agreement. Focusing explicitly on consent, respect, free will and benevolence was key to build as safe a place as possible. When you no longer reason in a hierarchical way, the reciprocity between the artist and the model becomes obvious. It helps to set up an open and experimental framework. However, emancipation requires awareness, trials, failures, reflection and discussions: I realized that this is indeed at the heart of my approach to transmitting.
I have recently added collage to my practice. For me, it is an alternative way to tell a story no longer by embodying it through figurative drawing but by opening up a space. Collage is also an impossible puzzle that defies logic and frame.
Everything in the processes I use contributes to the creation of singular creatures and organic spaces, characterized by their openness to interpretation, whose breathing is perceptible.