Par Ève-Marie Montfort
artists
This site is an ever-growing source of documentation. It is a dynamic tool and will host new artists and contents in the months and years to come.
regards
KMVH, déracinement et acculturation.
2022
Le travail de KMVH part d’une quête d’identité à travers les valeurs culturelles et l’assimilation à un territoire. Ses œuvres questionnent les confrontations culturelles et géographiques, ainsi que les rapports sociaux entre personnes issues d’horizons différents. Par cela, l’artiste souligne les difficultés rencontrées lors d’échanges interculturels abordant la notion de processus d’acculturation parle corps performé et la parole échangée.
actualité des artistes
Cosmologie de l’intime
Solo exhibition, Bibliothèque universitaire Droit-Lettres / Campus du Moufia, Saint-Denis de La Réunion, from the 06/02/2023 to the 13/07/2023, Esther Hoareau
Moment(s) Monument(s)
Puits Arabe, Saint-Philippe, Inauguration the 25th of February 2023, Anne Fontaine, Yohann Quëland de Saint-Pern
Ouvert uniquement les jours de festivités
Solo exhibition, Cité des Arts de la Réunion / Banyan, Saint-Denis de La Réunion, from the 22/04/2023 to the 10/06/2023, Soleïman Badat
Mois des Visibilités LGBTQIA+ 2023
Festival, La Réunion, from the 17/05/2023 to the 25/06/2023, Brandon Gercara
en bref
Cristof Dènmont
UP 28.10.2022
Born in 1977
Lives and works in Reunion Island
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LA BOX : 60 rue Auguste Lacaussade, 97430 Le Tampon, La Réunion
- Site Internet : laboxproject.com
Pièces à conviction, 2016.
Installation. Shelves, everyday objects, plant, drawings, photographs and digital prints. View from the group exhibition Sans engagement de votre part, 2016, La Box, Le Tampon, Reunion Island, curated by Yohann Quëland de Saint-Pern.
Cocobeach Club, 2014.
Oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm. Private collection.
Cloud 250219, 2019
Mixed media on canvas, 120 x 128 cm.
Photography © Laurent de Gebhardt
Station 220118, 2018
Oil on canvas, 170 x 190 cm
Collection Ville de Saint-Pierre. Photographie © Laurent de Gebhardt
Cristof Dènmont’s work is like the mischievous reflection of figurative and abstract painting. The contrasts and flat tints in his pictures give a basic indication of the depth of field, while the elements that compose the scenery seem to look back at us with the hazy composure of someone who has nothing left to prove. The suspension effect and playfulness that emanate from the works makes one feel as if one were inside a board game. Viewers may feel they have landed on a planet where figures of terrestrial life coexist in ways that are as surprising, or even puzzling, as pictures found on postcards advertising “from the tropics with love”. And yet behind these apparently symbolic leaps lies an extensive […]
Cristof Dènmont’s work is like the mischievous reflection of figurative and abstract painting. The contrasts and flat tints in his pictures give a basic indication of the depth of field, while the elements that compose the scenery seem to look back at us with the hazy composure of someone who has nothing left to prove. The suspension effect and playfulness that emanate from the works makes one feel as if one were inside a board game. Viewers may feel they have landed on a planet where figures of terrestrial life coexist in ways that are as surprising, or even puzzling, as pictures found on postcards advertising “from the tropics with love”. And yet behind these apparently symbolic leaps lies an extensive knowledge of painting, which the artist loves to hijack, and a biting reflection on what human beings consider to be close or foreign to them. With a single move, the artist raises the question of what it means to belong and to appropriate territories and concepts.
Marie Birot, 2020.
Kid Kreol & Boogie
UP 04.04.2023
They live and work in Reunion Island
Axis Mundi, 2019.
Mixed media (aerosol and acrylic), 1800 m². Autopont of Lyon, autoroute du Soleil.
© ADAGP 2019
Untitled, 2019.
Ink on poster paper, 7,77 m. Tamatave - Madagascar. Residency Patrimoine et création of the Conseil Général de La Réunion with the Iconothèque historique de l’océan Indien (IHOI).
Artwork © ADAGP 2019 | Photography M. Thurel
Untitled - Petrified Lava 2, 2018.
Ink on paper, 76 x 112 cm.
Untitled - Night, 2022
Aerosol and ink on paper, 50 x 70 cm.
The duo of artists Kid Kréol & Boogie (Jean-Sébastien Clain and Yannis Nanguet respectively) has been active since their teenage years. […] Their graffiti were at first inspired by 1970-1980s American street art, before they gradually broadened their style with the addition of references drawn from the culture and history of the Réunion Island – a history marked by an emptiness that the two artists apply themselves to fill, inhabit and re-embody. With this aim in mind, they have developed a mythology made up of sceneries (terrestrial and celestial), gods, goddesses, hybrid beings, and human and animal monsters. Their Mountain Men and Universe Men encourage us to imagine the geological and mythological […]
The duo of artists Kid Kréol & Boogie (Jean-Sébastien Clain and Yannis Nanguet respectively) has been active since their teenage years. […] Their graffiti were at first inspired by 1970-1980s American street art, before they gradually broadened their style with the addition of references drawn from the culture and history of the Réunion Island – a history marked by an emptiness that the two artists apply themselves to fill, inhabit and re-embody. With this aim in mind, they have developed a mythology made up of sceneries (terrestrial and celestial), gods, goddesses, hybrid beings, and human and animal monsters. Their Mountain Men and Universe Men encourage us to imagine the geological and mythological origins of the island. […] They extract phantasmagorical and hallucinatory figures, energies, spirits and ghosts from the surrounding nature and from the everyday elements of their lives. These entities (human, animal, vegetal, mineral) generate a space that opens up the potential for the multiplication and creolisation of new narratives.
Julie Crenn, excerpt from TEXTES CRITIQUES SCÈNE RÉUNIONNAISE, 2019.
Chloé Robert
UP 28.10.2022
Born in 1986
Lives and works in Reunion Island
Renard Pâle, 2020.
Mural painting, 3 x 2 m. Projet Kalbanon, Domaine de Bel Air, Sainte-Suzanne, La Réunion.
Crâne, 2017.
Painting on fabric, 45 x 45 cm.
La tribu des invisibles, 2017.
Series of animations (animated collage), video-projected on the walls of a gallery.
End-of-residency exhibition, production Département de La Réunion / Iconothèque Historique de l’Océan Indien
Le Mont Fuji dans le lointain, 2019.
Mixed media on paper, 65 x 100 cm.
This is a monkey that does not run on its hands and feet, but rather on vital energy and on the vivid memory of its prehistory. Chloé Robert has brought it to the surface using her claws. This is why a dark blade can be felt implicitly cutting through her work. There is a lost world shaking its mane at the surface of the paper. Her artistry comes out of nowhere and it has no time for politeness. In doing so, Chloé Robert strips her practice from academic teachings and their codes. Her method involves her looking for a path to her own source, without waiting for intellectual validation. The act of drawing, which is prevalent in her work, always hinges on the first line that springs from her fingers: if it […]
This is a monkey that does not run on its hands and feet, but rather on vital energy and on the vivid memory of its prehistory. Chloé Robert has brought it to the surface using her claws. This is why a dark blade can be felt implicitly cutting through her work. There is a lost world shaking its mane at the surface of the paper. Her artistry comes out of nowhere and it has no time for politeness. In doing so, Chloé Robert strips her practice from academic teachings and their codes. Her method involves her looking for a path to her own source, without waiting for intellectual validation. The act of drawing, which is prevalent in her work, always hinges on the first line that springs from her fingers: if it happens to be there, it is because it is necessary, as are animals and what we call Nature. The figures that appear in her drawings are most often depicted facing the audience. One truly feels looked at, called to, as is the case with her piece depicting a lettuce-man with his hanging tongue and unflinching gaze. He lives in a dimension that is his and his own species’ – a fact that automatically take us back to our own individual and collective selves, to our way of being human within the world. Another plant-like being looks at us sorrowfully. He seems disappointed in the broken promises of existence. He misses Nature – the real one, the pure one, the ideal one – and remains staring at the chasm of this impossible return. “But it’s all just a dream”, says Chloé Robert.
Marie Birot, 2021.
KMVH
UP 28.10.2022
Cent titres, 2015.
Video-performance, 1 min 10 s.
View from the group exhibition Borderline[s] 2, 2019.
The Granary Building, curator The Third Dot, Port-Louis, Mauritius. From left to right : Partir, Women Immigrant, Équilibre, Langue véhiculaire.
Pars cours famille 4, 2017.
Exhibition view, video installation for DNSEP jury, 2018, gallery of the École supérieure d’art de La Réunion, Le Port. From left to right: Façon née, 2017, video, 6 min // Pars cours famille 4, 2017, video, 5 min // Trans____ion, 2018, video, 1 min 6 s.
Photography © Reynald Alaguiry
Équilibre, 2016
Photo-performance, Dyptich, digital prints (5 copies), 180 x 65 cm
KMVH is a young multi-faceted artist whose work explores the way in which aspects of relationships – to oneself, to others, to space and to the world – can sometimes become stuck, stutter or hinder, become muddled, be avoided or confronted, fall apart or be rectified, work their way through us and affect us. The artist has developed a photographic and video-performative body of work in which she stages herself, as if to foil the plots of a personal mythology of exile. The implicit notion here is the question of the frames of reference that we hand down, erect or demolish, and build ourselves upon. The question is that of identity: what causes us to act a certain way, and how do we fit in elsewhere? KMVH’s work […]
KMVH is a young multi-faceted artist whose work explores the way in which aspects of relationships – to oneself, to others, to space and to the world – can sometimes become stuck, stutter or hinder, become muddled, be avoided or confronted, fall apart or be rectified, work their way through us and affect us. The artist has developed a photographic and video-performative body of work in which she stages herself, as if to foil the plots of a personal mythology of exile. The implicit notion here is the question of the frames of reference that we hand down, erect or demolish, and build ourselves upon. The question is that of identity: what causes us to act a certain way, and how do we fit in elsewhere? KMVH’s work aims to highlight various life stories. Whether intimate or collective, they are at times dented but always resistant; in search of lost spaces, beings or words; hidden under suitcases; forbidden or obvious; sweated out through the hands or shouted out through the eyes, and finding an incarnation here, in a work in action and in search of sharing.
Leïla Quillacq, 2020.
Brandon Gercara
UP 09.05.2023
Born in 1996
Lives and works in Reunion Island
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FRAC Réunion 6, allée des Flamboyants, 97436 Piton Saint-Leu
Playback of Kwir Thought
Installation, fictional performance, digital teleprompter, soundtrack, stage (iron, wood, strass, glitter, expanding foam, aerosol), wig, high-heeled shoes, suitcase, various items, 4 x 2 m.
Photo @ Ugo Wpatzi
Majik Kwir, 2021
With Ugo Woatzi. 7 digital prints on aluminium (3 copies), 20 x 30 cm.
Lip Sync of the Thought, 2020
Performance and installation, speeches : Asma Lamrabet, Françoise Vergès and Elsa Dorlin, 14 min.
Collection Frac Réunion © Marcel © Éric Lafargue
Lip Sync : Kaf Malbar : Rak Partout, 2019
Video, 1 min 45 s.
Director and editor Brandon Gercara Operator Marcel Figuration Margot Cazal and Jayce Salez
« Brandon Gercara is a non-binary person, zoreole (a zorey mom and a creole dad). They live and work in La Réunion where they have been active (…) in a militant artistic reflection focused on feminist, decolonial and LGBTQIA+ struggles. This is mainly translated into performative actions, such as, for example, the project PD - Pour Demain in which the artist incarnates a political figure in campaign. (…) Gradually, the project has evolved and now bears a generic name: Requeer . It is a platform for collective thoughts, a militant and artistic association at the heart of the Reunionese society. (…) Resources, models of identification and accessibility to this information are placed at the heart of Requeer […]
« Brandon Gercara is a non-binary person, zoreole (a zorey mom and a creole dad). They live and work in La Réunion where they have been active (…) in a militant artistic reflection focused on feminist, decolonial and LGBTQIA+ struggles. This is mainly translated into performative actions, such as, for example, the project PD - Pour Demain in which the artist incarnates a political figure in campaign. (…) Gradually, the project has evolved and now bears a generic name: Requeer. It is a platform for collective thoughts, a militant and artistic association at the heart of the Reunionese society. (…) Resources, models of identification and accessibility to this information are placed at the heart of Requeer. (…) Brandon Gercara, in alliance with their accomplices, injects their artistic reflection in the heart of society to deconstruct the sclerosing binarity, dominant models, oppressions and assignments. It is then a question of carrying a collective strategy of the joy to transform this violence into a both emancipating and vital force. »
Extracts from « Brandon Gercara » by Julie Crenn, Salon de Montrouge 2022
Yohann Quëland de Saint-Pern
UP 28.10.2022
Born in 1980
Lives and works in Reunion Island
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La Box : 60 rue Auguste Lacaussade, 97430, Le Tampon, La Réunion
Orchestre vide, with Myriam Omar Awadi and Nicolas Givran, 2016-2020.
Performative installation, armchairs, video karaoke. HD video, directed by Myriam Omar Awadi and Yohann Quëland de Saint-Pern. Variable duration, dimensions and materials. View from the group exhibition Sous le soleil exactement, 2017, Cité des arts, Saint-Denis, La Réunion, curated by Nathalie Gonthier. Collection Musée National du Mali.
Courge, 2020.
Installation, squash, wood, spirit level, height 35 cm.
Ombre, Plaine des Sables, 2009.
Video installation (50 min, HD), panoramic in two parts, plywood plates and video projection, variable dimensions. Collection Arthotèque de La Réunion. Exhibition view, Biennale des Arts Actuels (ADCNI), 2009, Hangar D2, Le Port, La Réunion.
War Zone Wits, 2018.
Installation, video projection, variable dimensions and materials. 4th International Biennial of Casablanca, Morocco, collection of the Essaouira art center, Ifitry. Creation in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris.
Yohann Quëland de Saint-Pern’s work questions the object, the body, the discourse and the notion of public space, as well as the power relationships at play within their various incarnations. Well-organised constructions and standardised compositions are all archetypes designed as conveyors of efficiency for the economy, production and reproduction, the circulation of people and goods, and as injunctions to adapt, therefore impacting our imagination. Statements, archives, images and protocolar objects circulate from piece to piece in works that are often “expandable”, and echo the political, economic and social histories and realities of territories impacted by post- or neo-colonialism. The works that stem […]
Yohann Quëland de Saint-Pern’s work questions the object, the body, the discourse and the notion of public space, as well as the power relationships at play within their various incarnations. Well-organised constructions and standardised compositions are all archetypes designed as conveyors of efficiency for the economy, production and reproduction, the circulation of people and goods, and as injunctions to adapt, therefore impacting our imagination. Statements, archives, images and protocolar objects circulate from piece to piece in works that are often “expandable”, and echo the political, economic and social histories and realities of territories impacted by post- or neo-colonialism. The works that stem from the artist’s research “highlights the parties involved” and in doing so topple the invisible burdens they carry. For Yohann Quëland de Saint-Pern, to create is to “invent the tools needed to open up perspectives and cultivate one’s territory like a field of new possibilities”.
Leïla Quillacq, excerpt from a text and interview with the artist, for documents d’artistes La Réunion, 2020.
Jean-Marc Lacaze
UP 28.10.2022
Represented by Aedaen Gallery, Strasbourg // Opus Art Réunion
Untitled, Chien noir series, 2012.
Ink on paper, 70 x 100 cm.
© ADAGP 2012
Ex-Voto, 2017.
Installation, plastic tablecloth, pedestal table, wax, pigments.
© ADAGP 2017
Rex Bourbon, 2013.
Installation, fabric, flex print, wood, rope. Variable dimensions. Collective exhibition view: Nuit d’art de Pleine Lune, L’Éperon, La Réunion.
© ADAGP 2013
Color Tank, Colordrama series, 2014.
Colored pencils on paper, 70 x 90 cm.
© ADAGP 2014
Both hilarious and solemn, Jean-Marc Lacaze’s work feels like a slap to the back of the head. The artist exploits the qualities of multiple mediums and materials to create connections between codes and motifs borrowed from various cultures as well as from history and current events. This confluence gives rise to a singular and candid graphic language. The gap between the neatness of the aesthetic and the straightforward brutality of the subject matter generates a narrative tension that overbalances stances usually described as politically committed – when they in fact serve only those who take these stances. Jean-Marc Lacaze’s posture consists in calling people out and making room for debate with undeniable […]
Both hilarious and solemn, Jean-Marc Lacaze’s work feels like a slap to the back of the head. The artist exploits the qualities of multiple mediums and materials to create connections between codes and motifs borrowed from various cultures as well as from history and current events. This confluence gives rise to a singular and candid graphic language. The gap between the neatness of the aesthetic and the straightforward brutality of the subject matter generates a narrative tension that overbalances stances usually described as politically committed – when they in fact serve only those who take these stances. Jean-Marc Lacaze’s posture consists in calling people out and making room for debate with undeniable generosity, rather than being provocative out of a sheer taste for style. In this sense, his work constitutes a plastic form of dark humour that combines raw sensitivity and high intellectual standards to urge us to take a hard look at the constant “what the fuck” feeling in which the observation of human activity immerses us.
Marie Birot, 2020.
Kako
UP 28.10.2022
Born in 1963
Lives and works in Reunion Island
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30, rue des Grands-Kiosques, Bourg-Murat, La Réunion
View of the solo exhibition Le tour des origines d’un nouveau monde - Madécasse, 2020.
Galerie Hang’Art, Saint-Pierre, La Réunion, curator Colette Pounia. Left: Hoditra series, 2020, ink and oil on canvas. Center: Fanal pou désot lo maye, 2020, installation, trunks, acrylic on canvas and fabric. Right: Les 7 filles d’Héva series, 2020, oil on canvas.
© ADAGP 2020
Made in China 4, Le tour des origines d’un nouveau monde - Made in China series, 2011.
Print on canvas, acrylic, Indian ink and pastel, 97 x 147 cm.
© ADAGP 2011
Winter Forest, 2020
Tamarind trunks, steel base.
Kako © ADAGP, Paris
La Kour Madam Henry - Tètflèr, 2022
Diptych. Digital prints, variable format.
Kako © ADAGP, Paris. Stéphane Kenkle, ADAGP, Paris.
Kako spent his childhood in the heights of the Réunion Island, surrounded by the omnipresent lushness of nature. From a young age, he developed a keen interest in these surroundings and became particularly fascinated by trees. By observing them, he detected signs, movements, and a surprising form of language. And so trees have become reference figures in his art. In his drawings, paintings and installations, the silhouette of the tree outlines space, reframes the image, and seems to stand between the viewer and the scene that is unfolding behind its branches. The artist uses the analogy of the root system to address the history of the people of the Réunion, which he calls “The New World” because of the forced […]
Kako spent his childhood in the heights of the Réunion Island, surrounded by the omnipresent lushness of nature. From a young age, he developed a keen interest in these surroundings and became particularly fascinated by trees. By observing them, he detected signs, movements, and a surprising form of language. And so trees have become reference figures in his art. In his drawings, paintings and installations, the silhouette of the tree outlines space, reframes the image, and seems to stand between the viewer and the scene that is unfolding behind its branches. The artist uses the analogy of the root system to address the history of the people of the Réunion, which he calls “The New World” because of the forced nature of its cultural mixing. Pushing his investigations further into the Indo-Oceanic region, he manages to convey the sense of poetry and wonder born from the friction between his imagination and the fragments of worlds that have slipped between his roots.
Marie Birot, 2020
Abel Techer
UP 28.10.2022
Represented by Maëlle Galerie, Paris
Untitled, 2020.
Oil on canvas, 180 x 230 cm.
Artwork © ADAGP 2020 | Photography courtesy Maëlle Galerie
Fais semblant!, 2016.
View from the solo exhibition Fais semblant!, 2016, Musée Léon Dierx, Saint-Denis de La Réunion. Left : Untitled.
Artwork © ADAGP 2016 | Photography courtesy Maëlle Galerie
I call you from the crossroads, 2020.
View of the solo exhibition I call you from the crossroads, 2020. Curated by Julie Crenn, Maëlle Galerie, Paris. From left to right: Rites pour d’autres corps, Ti femèl.
Artwork © ADAGP 2020 | Photography J. Michel, courtesy Maëlle Galerie
“A self-portrait is a strange way of becoming another.” In addition to his practice of drawing, sculpture, photography, video and installation, Abel Techer’s primary output is painting. (…) The almost religious aspect of his mise en scenes, tinged with the persistence of everyday worldliness, as well as his many references to church painting, work together to create an intimate portrait of a Creole society permeated with the ambiguity of its beliefs, the potential porosity of spaces and the potential metamorphosis of bodies. This is a form of painting in which the sublime and transfiguration coexist, as do the triviality of everyday bodies and objects, the sacred and the obscene, queerness (“the malleable […]
“A self-portrait is a strange way of becoming another.”
In addition to his practice of drawing, sculpture, photography, video and installation, Abel Techer’s primary output is painting. (…) The almost religious aspect of his mise en scenes, tinged with the persistence of everyday worldliness, as well as his many references to church painting, work together to create an intimate portrait of a Creole society permeated with the ambiguity of its beliefs, the potential porosity of spaces and the potential metamorphosis of bodies.
This is a form of painting in which the sublime and transfiguration coexist, as do the triviality of everyday bodies and objects, the sacred and the obscene, queerness (“the malleable properties of gender”*), realism and fantasy, imagination and dreams. From one painting to the next, Abel Techer shows us the very contemporary diary of his transformations. (…) Underlying connections repeatedly link his painting to vaster regions irrigated by the vivid unconscious of Creole societies. The succession of paintings composes a sort of coming-of-age narrative in which the painter’s body constantly transforms from one canvas to the next and, in doing so, comes closer to – at least in the biblical, if not magical sense of the term – a possible transfiguration.
Pierre-Louis Rivière, 2020.
* Judith Butler, Gender trouble.
Pascale Simont
UP 28.10.2022
Born in 1961
Lives and works in Saint-Denis, Reunion Island
La nage, L’ennui series, 2010.
Oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm.
© ADAGP 2010
Tea time, L’ennui series, 2014.
Oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm.
© ADAGP 2014
La Fiesta, 2011.
Oil on canvas, 100 x 82 cm.
© ADAGP 2011
Gingko, 2006.
Video, 4 min 46 s.
© ADAGP 2006
An unrelenting struggle between primitiveness and culture, as well as between inside and outside, is at play in Pascale Simont’s sleeping bodies, whether these are lost in a dream state or contorted in shock. Faces are a common element in the artist’s work, like internalisations and incarnations of her recurring abstract digressions, or expressions of deep feelings. At the slim border between what is and what should be, the tumefied bodies seem to be caught between two states – that of the social being that one builds from childhood, and expected to become embodied either in the form of a woman, a mother or a housewife, but also as an athlete or as the primitive, instinctive animal body. The composite […]
An unrelenting struggle between primitiveness and culture, as well as between inside and outside, is at play in Pascale Simont’s sleeping bodies, whether these are lost in a dream state or contorted in shock. Faces are a common element in the artist’s work, like internalisations and incarnations of her recurring abstract digressions, or expressions of deep feelings. At the slim border between what is and what should be, the tumefied bodies seem to be caught between two states – that of the social being that one builds from childhood, and expected to become embodied either in the form of a woman, a mother or a housewife, but also as an athlete or as the primitive, instinctive animal body. The composite paintings, videos or objects that Pascale Simont creates are as many sketches, questions and attempts to build around this duality. Sometimes, the borders and horizon of the island on which Pascale Simont has lived since 2000 seem to insinuate themselves into the artist’s work, like echoes of this inner fiction.
Laetitia Espanol, 2020.
Stéphanie Hoareau
UP 14.03.2023
Born in 1982
Lives and works in Reunion Island
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Atelier OCETRA : darse n° 6, atelier 38, Le Port, La Réunion
Bélouve, 2010.
Acrylic on canvas, 2 x 9 m, 6 panels (2 x 1,50 m). View from the exhibition Dak’Art 2012, Tenth Biennale of Contemporary African Art, Dakar. Collection of contemporary art of the City of Saint-Pierre, Reunion Island.
© ADAGP 2010
Jacqueline, 2014.
Resin and wood, 1 x 0,60 x 0,50 m. Detail, workshop view.
© ADAGP 2014
Ofé et Sanjee, Communauté inavouable series, 2018.
Oil on canvas, 2 x 2,50 m.
© ADAGP 2018
Quine !, Dessins de famille series, 2018.
Oxide on porcelain, 46 x 34 cm.
© ADAGP 2018
Painting is Stéphanie Hoareau’s medium of choice. Since the start of her career, she has painted the hidden parts of the Réunion Island by exploring its scenery and residents. […] The artist explores both natural and urban areas, which are conducive to observing different types of fauna. In 2012, she began to work on a large-scale project centred around the fringe figures of the Island […] – people living in the margins of society and regarded with a mixture of suspicion and fascination. These figures have given rise to many a legend and are the subjects of a multitude of rumours, tales and anecdotes. […] From photographs to paintings and from sculpture to video, there is something captivating about the […]
Painting is Stéphanie Hoareau’s medium of choice. Since the start of her career, she has painted the hidden parts of the Réunion Island by exploring its scenery and residents. […] The artist explores both natural and urban areas, which are conducive to observing different types of fauna. In 2012, she began to work on a large-scale project centred around the fringe figures of the Island […] – people living in the margins of society and regarded with a mixture of suspicion and fascination. These figures have given rise to many a legend and are the subjects of a multitude of rumours, tales and anecdotes. […] From photographs to paintings and from sculpture to video, there is something captivating about the intensity of their eyes. The confrontation of gazes – theirs and ours – elicits equal degrees of fascination and unease. Rather than focus on the marginality of these figures, Stéphanie Hoareau prefers to consider the freedom and frailty of the lives they live on the borders of the organised reality of society.
Julie Crenn, excerpt from TEXTES CRITIQUES SCÈNE RÉUNIONNAISE, 2019.
Esther Hoareau
UP 28.10.2022
Born in 1976
Lives and works in Saint-Pierre, Reunion Island
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Saint-Gilles-les-Bains, La Réunion
Untitled, Neige series, 2017.
Digital print mounted on aluminium, variable sizes. Collection FRAC Réunion.
Sanctuaire, 2010.
Video, 8 min. Collection Ville de Saint-Pierre.
Noir, Ovni series, 2013.
Photography, various materials. Private collection.
Rouge 2, Ovni series, 2013.
Photography, private collection.
Esther Hoareau’s works prompt a reflection on the relationships between Nature and Humankind. Her videos, drawings, photographs, texts and performance pieces highlight the different ways in which the body exists within scenery (terrestrial, celestial, marine, cosmic). From a perspective that is at once poetic, playful, spiritual, philosophical and sensitive, the artist addresses the notion of the sublime – of what we are unable to physically or conceptually comprehend. To the finiteness of the island, she opposes the idea of escape and diversion. […] Esther Hoareau draws from an imaginary world that is partly derived from her experience of the island, of her journeys (physical or mental) and of the observation […]
Esther Hoareau’s works prompt a reflection on the relationships between Nature and Humankind. Her videos, drawings, photographs, texts and performance pieces highlight the different ways in which the body exists within scenery (terrestrial, celestial, marine, cosmic). From a perspective that is at once poetic, playful, spiritual, philosophical and sensitive, the artist addresses the notion of the sublime – of what we are unable to physically or conceptually comprehend. To the finiteness of the island, she opposes the idea of escape and diversion. […] Esther Hoareau draws from an imaginary world that is partly derived from her experience of the island, of her journeys (physical or mental) and of the observation of her surroundings (both its details and its immensity). […] This ambivalent combination of fascination and concern is present in most of Esther Hoareau’s output, in which she meshes together wonderment, rekindled delight and powerfulness with a sense of the uncanny and the unknown.
Julie Crenn, excerpt from TEXTES CRITIQUES SCÈNE RÉUNIONNAISE, 2019.
Jean-Claude Jolet
UP 28.10.2022
Born in 1958
Lives and works in Reunion Island
Light bulb, Sculptures d’eau séries, 2014.
Sand, water, sunlight, lightbulb imprint. Video, 16 min 15 s.
© ADAGP 2022
Torsion, 2013.
Sculpture, plaster casts and pallets, 2 copies, 65 x 90 x 50 cm.
© ADAGP 2013
Stayin’ alive, 2020.
Sculpture in glued-laminated wood, 150 x 120 x 100 cm.
© ADAGP 2020
Pression (Le piège), 2013.
Installation, plywood sculpture, animal skin mantling, soundtrack.
© ADAGP 2013
Jean-Claude Jolet develops his projects as an observer of the world and of its social constructs. While initially trained as a sculptor, his work ranges from photography to architectural installations and conjures up a form of human dramaturgy through the mise en abyme of cultural or political objects. While avoiding any direct collision, Jean-Claude Jolet’s works whisper to anyone who wants to listen a potential new way of the world, in perpetual construction, motion and folds. Built with a variety of manufactured materials, as well as raw natural elements, they are organised into simple and delicate “mental sculptures” put together with the precision of a skilled technician, the ingenuity of a handyman and […]
Jean-Claude Jolet develops his projects as an observer of the world and of its social constructs. While initially trained as a sculptor, his work ranges from photography to architectural installations and conjures up a form of human dramaturgy through the mise en abyme of cultural or political objects. While avoiding any direct collision, Jean-Claude Jolet’s works whisper to anyone who wants to listen a potential new way of the world, in perpetual construction, motion and folds. Built with a variety of manufactured materials, as well as raw natural elements, they are organised into simple and delicate “mental sculptures” put together with the precision of a skilled technician, the ingenuity of a handyman and the sensitivity of a poet.
Laetitia Espanol, 2020
Leïla Payet
UP 28.10.2022
Exhibition view of Pictogrammes, 2015.
With Diana Madeleine, Claude Watrin gallery, Fameck. Production and curator Mondes du cinéma and Le Mètre Carré.
Discours sur le colonialisme, Aimé Césaire, 3, Tapis Mendiant series, 2014.
Video, 26 s.
Fonnkèr haïku pou silans, Lalangue corpus, 2019.
Installation, digital prints on blue back, video, 2 mn 55 s, exhibition view Vague silencieuse, ESA Réunion.
NO STATUES/NO STATUT, épisode 0, 2019.
Short film co-directed with Diana Madeleine, music by Mélanie Badal, 4 min 49 s, photogram.
Leïla Payet’s work focuses on the “origin story” of the insular territory she lives in. Her starting point is an atlas of research that consists in a collection of images and data, which she uses to compose open-ended and conversational works. These works centre on so-called “primitive” or “exotic” art and their peripheral existence in globalised thought. Designed as embryonic productions based on a primitive language, they are meant as “repeated refrains, graphic emissions, bursts of thought”. Each series, including the central No statuts/No statues, explores the way in which thoughts, discourses and images are constructed, and questions the “creolisation process” that lies at the heart of colonisation and […]
Leïla Payet’s work focuses on the “origin story” of the insular territory she lives in. Her starting point is an atlas of research that consists in a collection of images and data, which she uses to compose open-ended and conversational works. These works centre on so-called “primitive” or “exotic” art and their peripheral existence in globalised thought. Designed as embryonic productions based on a primitive language, they are meant as “repeated refrains, graphic emissions, bursts of thought”. Each series, including the central No statuts/No statues, explores the way in which thoughts, discourses and images are constructed, and questions the “creolisation process” that lies at the heart of colonisation and decolonisation. Hers is a work in progress that questions our “ways of seeing” and implicitly raises the issue of the struggle for the rehabilitation of stories, languages and territories that have been stifled, contorted and dispossessed.
Leïla Quillacq, excerpt from a text and interview with the artist, for documents d’artistes La Réunion, 2020.
Soleïman Badat
UP 28.10.2022
Born in 1974
Lives and works in Saint-Denis, Reunion Island
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Ateliers LERKA : 51, Route de Saint-François, 97400 Saint-Denis, La Réunion
Der größte Berg der Insel, Back to promise island series, 2011.
Digital photographie, variable sizes.
Doomsday rising / slim slender, 2014.
India ink and watercolor on paper, 50 x 65 cm.
Found footage project, 2015.
Video installation, 4:3 TV monitors and projection, variable duration and dimensions. View of the event Parcours artistique des journées du patrimoine européen, 2015, curated by Nathalie Gonthier, Courants d’art, underground parking lot of the Mairie de Saint-Denis, La Réunion.
War is peace, 2012.
With Jean-Marc Lacaze. Acrylic on paper, pins, 200 x 200 cm, FRAC Réunion collection. View of the group exhibition Océanique, 2014, TÉAT Champ Fleuri, curator Caroline Smulders.
Soleïman Badat’s plastic compositions are elastic and modular. His drawings and paintings use dark humour, while his photographic and videographic work adopts a more documentary posture that takes a critical look at what constitutes an event and therefore impacts our understanding of the world. His experimental research brings about a multitude of raw materials, which the artist delves into, arranges and mixes to generate “glitches” – parasites that infiltrate sound and image until the information they convey becomes “gritty” – and in doing so gives rise through its very substance to controversial and harsh subjects. Balanced between a degree of dreamy and contemplative optimism and a pragmatic awareness of […]
Soleïman Badat’s plastic compositions are elastic and modular. His drawings and paintings use dark humour, while his photographic and videographic work adopts a more documentary posture that takes a critical look at what constitutes an event and therefore impacts our understanding of the world. His experimental research brings about a multitude of raw materials, which the artist delves into, arranges and mixes to generate “glitches” – parasites that infiltrate sound and image until the information they convey becomes “gritty” – and in doing so gives rise through its very substance to controversial and harsh subjects. Balanced between a degree of dreamy and contemplative optimism and a pragmatic awareness of their natural, societal, economic and political surroundings, Soleïman Badat’s works constantly oscillate between forms that are both resilient and chaotic, or enchanted and degenerative, and implicitly encourage a form of revolt.
Leïla Quillacq, 2020
Stéphane Kenkle
UP 28.10.2022
Born in 1975
Lives and works in Reunion Island
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N4e rue des Grands Kiosques, La Plaine des Cafres, La Réunion
Detail from Famille aux lianes, Famille aux lianes series, 2017.
Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 100 cm.
© ADAGP 2017
Detail from In lerd’fami 3, In lerd’fami series, 2018.
Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 100 cm.
© ADAGP 2018
Detail from In lerd’fami 1, In lerd’fami series, 2018.
Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 100 cm.
© ADAGP 2018
Station 9, Somin an krwa series, 2014-2015.
Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 200 cm.
© ADAGP 2014-2015
Stéphane Kenkle’s painting focuses mainly on the depiction of the human figure and family portraits. His subjects, which he presents as half-length or full-length portraits, are painted in Fauvist colours with eyes wide open, suspended in pattern-studded spaces. Their attitudes seem to indicate that they are posing as they would in a photography studio, as if they were trying to give the impression of a “respectable” family – a tightly knit clan in which roles are assigned and performed according to the norm. But then one notices a hand hidden behind someone’s back, a foot bent inwards, or a tense clasp. A feeling of unease cracks the image and gives the fabricated nature of the reunion away. The backgrounds […]
Stéphane Kenkle’s painting focuses mainly on the depiction of the human figure and family portraits. His subjects, which he presents as half-length or full-length portraits, are painted in Fauvist colours with eyes wide open, suspended in pattern-studded spaces. Their attitudes seem to indicate that they are posing as they would in a photography studio, as if they were trying to give the impression of a “respectable” family – a tightly knit clan in which roles are assigned and performed according to the norm. But then one notices a hand hidden behind someone’s back, a foot bent inwards, or a tense clasp. A feeling of unease cracks the image and gives the fabricated nature of the reunion away. The backgrounds of the portraits, covered in vines, stars or embroideries, play an integral part in the decorum of these strange schemes (as confirmed by the titles of the pieces: Family with vines, Family with clover, Family with maidenhair ferns…). Stéphane Kenkle scratches away at the varnish of the icons that stand on our shelves and urges us to perhaps reconsider these frames and the people who inhabit them.
Marie Birot, 2020.
Alice Aucuit
UP 31.10.2022
Born in 1982
Lives and works in Reunion Island
Represented by Galerie Very Yes, La Réunion, Galerie Collection, Ateliers d'Art de France, Paris, Opus Art Réunion
Gorgone et Baba Yaga, L’Écho des berceuses series, 2020.
Workshop view. Porcelain, height 30 cm.
© ADAGP 2020
Kèr, 2014.
Porcelain, Anagama firing.
© ADAGP 2014
La danse, Parodies series, 2015.
Porcelain plate, transfers. Collection Musée de Villèle.
© ADAGP 2015
Untitled, 2016.
Smoked porcelain, Anagama firing.
© ADAGP 2016
Alice Aucuit’s preferred medium is ceramics – a traditional craft that she combines with contemporary transfer and reproduction techniques. Working in series with evocative titles, she lays the groundwork for production by immersing herself in a location and its history with which her works can interact. Archéologie absente (Absent Archaeology), Parodie (Parody), La Part des Anges (The Angels’ Share) and L’Écho des Berceuses (The Echo of Lullabies) each tackle a heritage that is both visible and invisible, and which serves as a starting point for new narratives. “I unpick fairy tales, myths and current news items, and use them to weave anachronistic and syncretic stories that I embroider onto the canvas of […]
Alice Aucuit’s preferred medium is ceramics – a traditional craft that she combines with contemporary transfer and reproduction techniques. Working in series with evocative titles, she lays the groundwork for production by immersing herself in a location and its history with which her works can interact. Archéologie absente (Absent Archaeology), Parodie (Parody), La Part des Anges (The Angels’ Share) and L’Écho des Berceuses (The Echo of Lullabies) each tackle a heritage that is both visible and invisible, and which serves as a starting point for new narratives. “I unpick fairy tales, myths and current news items, and use them to weave anachronistic and syncretic stories that I embroider onto the canvas of Humanity”, she says. From the intimate to the universal, from the sacred to the popular, these stories feature love, creation, femininity and death, and end up resonating in the collective unconscious. These topics are deeply visible in the hearts and bones of the series Ker and Bone China, which carry an implicit memory of bodies and fairy tales – cathartic, like as many vanitas.
Leïla Quillacq, 2020.
Anne Fontaine
UP 14.03.2023
Born in 1983
Lives and works in Reunion Island
Cueillir, 2019.
Installation, terracotta, leaf prints, mirror, variable dimensions. View of the group exhibition Open Studio La Box, 2020. Collective curatorship, La Box, Le Tampon, Reunion Island. Work resulting from the residency Patrimoine et Création of the Département, at Mascarin, Jardin Botanique de La Réunion.
Artwork © ADAGP 2019 | Photography V. Abella
La Friche, 2019.
40 digital prints, oak frames (400 x 266,67 mm), 322 x 196 cm. View of the group exhibition Open Studio La Box, 2020. Collective curatorship, La Box, Le Tampon, Reunion Island. Work resulting from the residency Patrimoine et Création of the Département, at Mascarin, Jardin Botanique de La Réunion.
Artwork © ADAGP 2020 | Photography V. Abella
Les Invasives, 2019.
Installation, fresh plants, 4.66 x 2.44 m. View from the group exhibition Papier Peint, 2019, Espace Carambole and La Box, Le Tampon, La Réunion. Curated by Yohann Quëland de Saint-Pern.
© ADAGP 2019
Mylène Techer, Les vaches, Le repos du Paysan series, 2020.
Digital photography, variable sizes.
© ADAGP 2020
Anne Fontaine uses the garden in its wild state as grounds for observation and sociological and graphic research. Working within a circumscribed area, she collects plants and classifies them as she would a herbarium. This methodical picking expresses and runs throughout her thought process and her examination of movements of human populations and the conditions in which we are able to live together as communities. She then uses drawing, photography, painting and wallpaper as mediums to convey the various stages of her research and findings. In the end, her pieces become graphic and poetic theorems of the living world. Anne Fontaine does not use this technique simply as an effective and clever way of presenting […]
Anne Fontaine uses the garden in its wild state as grounds for observation and sociological and graphic research. Working within a circumscribed area, she collects plants and classifies them as she would a herbarium. This methodical picking expresses and runs throughout her thought process and her examination of movements of human populations and the conditions in which we are able to live together as communities. She then uses drawing, photography, painting and wallpaper as mediums to convey the various stages of her research and findings. In the end, her pieces become graphic and poetic theorems of the living world. Anne Fontaine does not use this technique simply as an effective and clever way of presenting her observations. Instead, she uses a sensitive and intuitive language, poised between what is unknown to us and what we are able to refer to. Her creations are hypotheses that do not seek to convince but rather to question, to make us do with what we see. One is drawn to her work because of its beauty, its contained, precise and structured workmanship and, by extension, the various feelings and thoughts we experience mirror the outlines of her intricate and demanding work.
Marie Birot, 2020.
Myriam Omar Awadi
UP 28.10.2022
Born in 1983
Lives and works in Reunion Island
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La Box : 60 rue Auguste-Lacaussade, 97430, Le Tampon, La Réunion
Esthétique de la broderie - La visite guidée, 2012.
Performance, 30 min. Author : Myriam Omar Awadi. Actor : Nicolas Givran. With the participation of the SAMSAH DV, association of visually impaired people. Coproduction Arthothèque de La Réunion.
(IN)ACTE IV / BRODER, 2011.
Installation, mattress, two embroidered sheets 245 x 225 cm, video projection 16/9 HDV, 30 min (playback in loop).
(IN)ACTE III / MARCHER SUR DES ŒUFS, 2009.
Installation, 150 porcelain cups, 16/9 HDV video projection, 3 min loop. Group exhibition view ADCNI Biennial 2009, Le Port.
Orchestre vide, Karaoké de la pensée, with Yohann Quëland de Saint-Pern, 2016.
Performative installation. Original idea by Nicolas Givran, Myriam Omar Awadi and Yohann Quëland de Saint-Pern. Conception and realization : Myriam Omar Awadi and Yohann Quëland de Saint-Pern.
Embroidering, stitching and unpicking, as if one were doing nothing: these are the types of “non-actions” or “counter-actions” that make up Myriam Omar Awadi’s work. Using writing, drawing, images and performance, the artist weaves the fabric of ordinary romances “of which nothing is left but embellishments”. Esthétique de la broderie , (IN)ACTES and Paroles Paroles are bodies of work designed as research and creative laboratories in which language and silences, and bodies and absences become concrete materials and subjects for potential narratives. As the artist uncoils the thread of whatever resists in her gestures, in the object or in the depiction, a motif appears in the background: a blue flower, like a […]
Embroidering, stitching and unpicking, as if one were doing nothing: these are the types of “non-actions” or “counter-actions” that make up Myriam Omar Awadi’s work. Using writing, drawing, images and performance, the artist weaves the fabric of ordinary romances “of which nothing is left but embellishments”. Esthétique de la broderie, (IN)ACTES and Paroles Paroles are bodies of work designed as research and creative laboratories in which language and silences, and bodies and absences become concrete materials and subjects for potential narratives. As the artist uncoils the thread of whatever resists in her gestures, in the object or in the depiction, a motif appears in the background: a blue flower, like a eulogy of nothingness, a symbol of hidden desire. The flower gradually makes way for the sequin, which reflects the light in the deserted space and adorns the night to make it shine. Myriam Omar Awadi’s work questions the ways in which we inhabit empty spaces by taking apart the spectacle, getting rid of what fascinates us in favour of what stings, and attacking the world… with a love song.
Leïla Quillacq, excerpt from a text and interview with the artist, for documents d’artistes La Réunion, 2020.
Tiéri Rivière
UP 28.10.2022
Born in 1981
Lives and works in Reunion Island
Billes, 2021.
Video, 40 s.
© ADAGP 2021
Champ, 2013.
Sculpture, plexiglass, 25,000 rods, 120 x 220 cm. Production Art Sud, Saint-Joseph.
© ADAGP 2013
Home, 2012.
120 cinder blocks 120 x 80 x 160 cm. Exhibition view at the Centre d’Art Albert Chanot, Clamart.
© ADAGP 2012
Sac de couchage, 2018.
Series of 6 drawings, 32 x 26 cm. Collection Ville de Saint-Pierre, La Réunion.
© ADAGP 2018
While Tiéri Rivière may not favour any specific medium and effortlessly shifts from video to installation to drawing to volume work, the same attachment to the idea of balance runs throughout his work, as he experiments and researches this notion in pieces based on tension and potential collapse. By materialising the expectation for a situation to occur (or not), the artist plays with time and with the way it will affect the viewer’s perception of the art. This temporal variable plays a part in the creative process, whether through the idea of suspension or the idea of repetition. This is especially the case in his videos, all of which follow the same production principle: short, looped sequence-shots of […]
While Tiéri Rivière may not favour any specific medium and effortlessly shifts from video to installation to drawing to volume work, the same attachment to the idea of balance runs throughout his work, as he experiments and researches this notion in pieces based on tension and potential collapse. By materialising the expectation for a situation to occur (or not), the artist plays with time and with the way it will affect the viewer’s perception of the art. This temporal variable plays a part in the creative process, whether through the idea of suspension or the idea of repetition. This is especially the case in his videos, all of which follow the same production principle: short, looped sequence-shots of simple and often funny situations, producing burlesque overtones that appear implicitly throughout his entire body of work.
Objects occupy a central position in Tiéri Rivière’s works. Many of these depict the artist playing around with an object. The objects used are simple: a basin, a cinderblock or a sheet of corrugated iron, are all parts of a playful and intuitive plastic vocabulary that grows in time.
Tiéri Rivière’s works are characterised by their economy of means and their precise craftsmanship. This process is also found in the way he constructs his volumes through the use of simple workmanship or minute assemblage (Voyaz, Radeau, Bureau …), as well as in his drawings, in which blank space has a plastic quality, in that it stands out from its base and allows a graphic tension to linger: is the figure emerging from the blank surface or is it going to dissolve in it?