Curare program
A curatorial look at the Inception, Process and Digital sectors
In partnership with C-E-A, the French association of exhibition curators
For this edition, the show is renewing its partnership with C-E-A, the French association of curators. Following a call for applications, two curators have been selected to take a singular look at the Inception, Process and Digital sectors, exploring how contemporary drawing today extends beyond its traditional media.
This partnership reflects a shared commitment to supporting curatorial research and offering new perspectives on the art scene.
Independent curator Domitille Bertrand takes a look at the Inception sector
Domitille Bertrand is an exhibition curator and trainer. A 2010 graduate of ICART in Paris, she supports artists at the dawn of their careers, as well as more experienced ones. Interested in the plastic arts and their hybridization, she has organized several artistic residencies, four international competitions and curated some forty independent exhibitions in Paris, San Francisco and Dakar. She has also collaborated with independent projects in Geneva and Brazzaville. In 2016, she founded Develop'on, on which D Galerie and D Formations depend. Since 2020, she has been an active member of C-E-A, conducting interviews and regularly participating in the writing of critical texts, in addition to her activities as a trainer and curator.
What is your greatest challenge as a curator of contemporary art exhibitions?
I'd say it's to achieve the paradox of a sufficiently subterranean trace, on the one hand, to allow that which is perceptible in the studio and in the minds of the artists whose pieces we strive to showcase to their best advantage. On the other hand, it also means defending our profession and the need to match exhibition spaces as closely as possible to this fertile and useful association for the visitor navigating with the works. Another challenge is to work with what is, but also with the whole corpus to come, felt and unhatched, because the curator, like other intermediaries, engages in a discussion to build before the work has come to fruition. For me, working with a form of movement as material is what makes this job so fascinating. The feeling of being on the front line, one of the first translators.
Drawing has traditionally been defined as being on paper. What innovations in contemporary drawing are you most excited about?
For me, drawing is a love of line. It seems to me that, while paper retains a fundamental place in its organic link to the artists who touch it, space, volume and emptiness become equally interesting sites for invention. Fiber, installation and immersive configurations also offer a thrilling echo of the sheet, whether as extensions or beginnings. Contemporary drawing is not a sketch of another work, but a trace of a space that literally overturns perspectives. For me, a work like that of Hyacinthe Ouattara, with whom I was lucky enough to collaborate on Organic Mood (2020, a 75m2 immersive textile installation), is the pure enthusiasm of a drawing that invites us to enter into its lines of colored fibers in a very concrete way.
Lucie Ménard, independent curator, looks at the Process and Digital sectors
Lucie Ménard is an independent curator and a 2019 graduate of the Curatorial studies post-graduate program at KASK - School of Arts (Ghent, Belgium). Since 2012, she has also been in charge of educational and cultural services at Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing. Alongside Lieselotte Egtberts, Elisa Maupas and Anna Stoppa, Lucie Ménard is one of the co-founders of moss, a cross-border curatorial collective at the crossroads of Belgium, France, Italy and the Netherlands. In 2022, the collective won a research grant from the Institut pour la photographie de Lille for the project Deal with it - Esthétiques de la réparation. Nourished by the dynamic between these different activities, Lucie Ménard is particularly interested in plastic gestures as acts of care, the back-and-forth between materiality and digital images in contemporary practices, the intersecting temporalities at play in creative processes, and the tension between attention(s) and distraction(s) in the way we look at works.
What is your greatest challenge as a curator of contemporary art? contemporary art exhibitions?
In a context of visual over-solicitation, I'm particularly interested in how to succeed in producing a framework - theoretical, spatial, temporal - that gives each work the attention it needs, and invites us to take our time. A curatorial project can also be developed in ways other than the classic exhibition format (publications, thematic cycles, websites, workshops, etc.). The role of curator seems to me to be crucial in bringing together multiple perspectives, which go beyond the sensitive experience of the work to enhance our view of the world and complicate our representations, in order to envisage other forms of sensibility and narratives. In an image-centric society, the gaze is political: what we choose to see or not to see, to look at, to show. It can be difficult to allow ourselves to marvel in the current context, but I'm very attached to this notion of wonder, the act of creation as a driving force for hope, action and transformation.
Drawing has traditionally been defined as being on paper. What innovations in contemporary drawing are you most excited about?
I find it fascinating to see how new technologies can augment and complement the possibilities of drawing, giving shape to ideas that would previously have been impossible to implement. I'm thinking, for example, of the work A main levée by artist Pauline de Chalendar, whose initial mediums were drawing and animation. Her dream of "drawing in the air" was realized at Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, through the development of a virtual reality digital drawing device in collaboration with a scientific laboratory, tailor-made for her practice thanks to a motion sensor attached to her hand. A VR headset then enabled us to follow his gestures, and discover the line of the drawing gradually taking shape around us. I find this particularly relevant when the deployment is justified by a strong poetic intention, and is not entirely digital but retains an element of plasticity, in a back-and-forth between the materiality and immateriality of drawing.
If you were to choose to start a collection of 20th-century drawings, which piece by which artist would you choose?
Hard to choose just one, but probably a drawing from Léo Lionni's "La botanique parallèle", a deceptively scientific book in which he describes and draws imaginary plants, like those that are only visible when photographed. He is also the author of the marvellous drawings and collages that illustrate his children's books, which had a big impact on me when I was growing up. The collection could then be continued with a drawing by the artist Anna Zemánková, featured in many art brut collections, who imagines colorful plants by mixing pastels, textile cut-outs, embroidery and perforations in paper. And if we go back further, a rubbing by Max Ernst from his "Histoire naturelle" series. What these artists have in common is a great deal of freedom in the materials and drawing techniques they use, starting from a careful observation of the world to bring their inner visions to life. A fine start to a collection!