PUBLICATIONS / books ; catalogs ; reviews
KONTAKT
ewspaper free of charges, published by Alex Chevalier, 2023
French
MONUMENTS DE SILENCE. Réappropriations mémorielles dans l'art contemporain
text : Anne Bernou ___éditions Unes, Nice, 2023
interview with Anne Bernou
extract
French
ENTRE ASSIGNATION ET POÏÉTIQUE GESTUELLE : CONFRONTATION DES PATTERNS AUX RYTHMES VITAUX
text : Anne-Cécile Lenoël / Murielle Navarro ___Astasa review. éd Université Bordeaux Montaigne, 2022
French
MONSTRUOSA ÉDITION
magazine n°39, 2022
French
ON EASTERFUTURISM
text : Sonia Voss ___Kajet review 05 (Roumania), 2022
English
LES LANGUES SONT DES OBJETS MIGRATEURS
interview with Sophie Kaplan ___Lili, la rozell et le marimba review, éd. La Criée (Rennes), 2022
French
LE PHOTOTEXTE ENGAGÉ, UNE CULTURE VISUELLE DU MILITANTISME AU 20ÈME SIÈCLE
text : Charlotte Foucher Zarmanian & Magali Nachtergael ___Presses du Réel, Paris, 2021
French
RÉGULER LES CONFLITS ET SORTIR DE LA VIOLENCE
Sociales Sciences review. éd. Université de Strasbourg, 2021
French
VU·E·S D’ENSEMBLE
FemmesPHOTOgraphes review n°9, 2020
French
| ET MAINTENANT |
publication following the event. Frac Lorraine, 2020
French
MONUMENT ET CONTRE-MONUMENT. D'UNE ÉPOQUE À L'AUTRE
text: Anne Bernou ___in "À rebrousse-temps", catalog. éd. musée Camille Claudel (Paris), 2019
French
DE LEUR TEMPS (6). COLLECTIONNER AU XXIè siècle
catalog, 2019
French
SOME OF US
catalog, 2019
French
PRIX AWARE
text: Hélène Guenin ___catalog of the AWARE prize, 2018
French | English
PRIX LEAP
text: Hélène Guenin ___monograph, éd. Les Rotondes (Luxembourg), 2018
French | English
62ème SALON DE MONTROUGE
text: Emmanuelle Lequeux ___catalog, 2017
French | English
JET LAG / OUT OF SYNC.
catalog, 2017
French
BIENNALE DE LA JEUNE CRÉATION EUROPÉENNE
catalog, 2017
French
KUNSTPREIS ROBERT SCHUMAN
text: Élodie Stroecken ___catalog of the Robert Schuman prize, 2015
French | deutsch
SILENCES SOMPRIS
text: Stéphane Le Mercier ___catalog, 2012
French
LA PART MANQUANTE
catalog, 2011
French
Marianne Mispelaëre’s work functions on a sensitive plane by deploying fleeting gestures or spoken exchanges that become embodied in the simple tracing of lines, the silent eloquence of the signs we produce, and the disappearance of conventional forms of language. The artist’s universe is not withdrawn from the world. Rather, it explores one of its marginal paths: that which consists in distancing oneself from the continuous flow of words stripped from their context and singular histories in order to return to more essential, and yet fragile, forms of language.
Marianne Mispelaëre observes the world’s agitation and its moments of uprising. This can be seen in the series Silent Slogan (2016-ongoing), in which she searches the Internet for pictures of gestures made during spontaneous rallies since 2010, from the Arab Spring to Nuit debout. The resulting series of postcards is a visual encyclopaedia in its own right, and brings together anonymous attempts to communicate the here and now of the people’s action to the rest of the world through ordinary and impulsive hand signs. All that is left today of these disappointed hopes is the polyphony of silent messages, which, at the time, chose the immediacy of a universal and direct form of expression over the media’s chaotic comments. “To me, the ‘Arab Spring’ is a fervent reminder of the impossibility of accepting the loss of a certain conception of free humankind [1]”, says the artist. “Explaining reality doesn’t necessarily make it real. The telling of History must bear traces that do not imply an immediacy of methods or an accreditation of sources [2].” Silent Slogan also tells of the impossibility of this visual Babel. Indeed, the gestures, when taken out of their context and culture, can be subjected to a multitude of interpretations. What remains is the fulgurance of history in the making.
There is also the silence of hands that refuse to communicate or reveal their identity in the performance No Man’s Land (2014-2016), in which participants systematically striate the palm and fingers of their hand with a ballpoint pen before applying it to a piece of paper. The hand with its palm, the ultimate visual map of one’s life, and with its fingers, the intimate trace of one’s singularity, is in this case covered up, as if to deny its identity. The idea for the performance came from an image from Sylvain Georges’ documentary Qu’ils reposent en révolte (2010) about Calais and the men who scarify their hands in a final move to erase their roots and history.
While our lifespan may be read in the palm our hands, in this case existence becomes indistinct, caught in a cacophony of tangled lines, like a blur of various destinies.
Sometimes a line becomes a furrow and the body a standard by which to gauge space, as in Mesurer les actes (2011-ongoing). Created as performance pieces, these murals consist in vertical parallel lines drawn very close to each other in varying densities of greys and blacks and in continuous, unbroken strokes starting from the highest point the artist is able to reach. She keeps drawing until she runs out of ink, space, or energy. The line – both a trajectory and a process – becomes a seismograph of the body in its own right. In this constant to and fro between an anthropomorphic reinterpretation of drawing and an anthropology of gestures, and between intimate and collective realms, Marianne Mispelaëre pursues her quest for a form of primitivism or quintessence of movements. While her work expresses a certain difficulty to enunciate or be heard amid the deafening sound of the world, it also affirms, project after project, the persistence of vital impulses, forms of resistance, and essential signs.
Hélène Guenin, director of the Musée d’art moderne et d’art contemporain (Nice, France)
This text have been written and published as part of Marianne Mispelaëre’s nomination at the AWARE prize for women artists 2018.
[1]. Marianne Mispelaëre, « Printemps Arabe », 2014. This text was written when she was working on the project « Newspaper ».
[2]. Ibidem.