talks and performances

FRIDAY MARCH 27

2:30 pm - Lise terdjman - body letters #2

Multidisciplinary artist and researcher Lise Terdjman presents her performance Body letters #2 from the series "From my head to my feets by my hands", premiering in Copenhagen in 2021. Body letters #2 is both a drawn score and an alphabet book, articulating the letter with the gesture of tracing and the movement of the body. The performance puts into action this score inhabited by the history of modern dance, with references to Mary Wygman and Valeska Gert. This series of drawings condenses a repertoire of forms ranging from writing to figures, in an anthropometric relationship to the artist's body. For Lise Terdjman, the gesture of tracing becomes a critical tool for re-reading the history of art and modern dance. The artist interprets the letters drawn by the audience, like a jazz score at a given moment, between improvisation and transcription, linking language and body movement in space.

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Lise Terdjman is a graduate of both the École des Beaux-arts de Paris and the Arts décoratifs de Paris. A multi-disciplinary artist and researcher, she practices drawing in a porous way with other disciplines, using it as a critical tool for re-reading. Her installations bring together several media: drawing, ceramics, photography and performance. She has carried out projects with various public institutions, including the Musée de Picardie, 2025-2026; the Musée Cognacq-Jay and Yia Art Fair, 2015; and the Musée du Louvre, 2004-2005. She has participated in residencies at Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers, 2021; group exhibitions, Poush, 2023; and solo, Centre culturel de la ville de Beauvais, 2016. She has exhibited abroad, Galerie Specta, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2021; and is part of the collection of the New Carlsberg Foundation in Denmark.

4pm - Curare program, inception sector x C-E-A

Moderation: Joana P. R. Neves (show artistic director)
Guests: Domitille Bertrand (exhibition curator), Baha Kocabey (visual artist) and Kid Kréol & Boogie (visual artists).

Between dream and reality, childhood landscape, memory and active life, how do spaces summoned or recomposed by drawing rewrite complex histories? The three artists invited by Domitille Bertrand stimulated this line of discussion through the prism of territory. Hailing from Reunion Island (a French island region in the middle of the Indian Ocean), Kid Kréol & Boogie use drawing to archive the bright red "endemic" oratories dotted around the island, dedicated to ti bondieu. Bahar Kocabey, a Franco-Kurdish artist, installs drawing in space as a landscape composed of memories and dreams originating in or leading to the mountains where Kurdish women fighters live. What role does drawing play in this network of stories, landscapes and legends?

*Domitille Bertrand has been selected to take a look at the Inception sector - a partnership renewed for the second year running with theAssociation française des commissaires d'exposition - C-E-A.

Language: French

Joana P. R. Neves

Domitille Bertrand

Misk Art Institute

Misk Art Institute

Bahar kocabey

12 La Galerie

Kid Kréol & Boogie

5:30 p.m. - Drawing THINK TANK

Moderator: Joana P. R. Neves (show artistic director)
Guests: Ricardo Nicolau (Museu de Serralves, Porto, Portugal) and Irina Zucca Alessandrelli (Fondazione Ramo, Milan, Italy)

In the run-up to Drawing Now's 20th anniversary in 2027, a Drawing Think Tank is being organized with contemporary art professionals to discuss and share what contemporary drawing represents in their context. How is it perceived, practiced and collected? What synergies does it create in the Portuguese, Iberian and Italian ecosystem, and beyond? Our two guests represent, on the one hand, an institution of mixed status with a collection of international contemporary art in a country where drawing is omnipresent (Serralves), and a private foundation (Ramo) whose collection is solely made up of Italian drawing: what influence might these two positions have on this discipline?

Language: English

Joana P. R. Neves

Photo Beryl Libault

Irina Zucca Allessandrelli

Aurélien Bambagioni

Ricardo Nicolau

7pm - François Morelli - À Bout portant

À Bout portant is a three-stage drawing performance premiering during Drawing Now. In addition to an assortment of drawing media, tools and techniques, Morelli is assisted by his Belt Heads. Made from used belts, these sculptural prostheses have been both the subjects and objects of his intersectional artistic practice for over twenty-five years. Working horizontally directly on the floor on large sheets of paper, gestures of embodied drawing spread over time onto adjacent walls. Enigmatic and strange in nature, the work is based on an improvised approach to movement and the creation of traces. Who draws what... and why? Sometimes narrative, the work remains conceptual while exploring various types of physical and psychological constraints.

"My works, whether two- or three-dimensional, performative or installation-based, claim to be hybrid, heterogeneous and iconoclastic. They are also part of the DIY tradition, making use of misappropriated objects and materials. The Belt Heads are made from old, salvaged belts, riveted and knotted. Fitted with a glove inside, they operate like puppets, coming to life when manipulated. They transform and change their user. These heads are part of my interest in the human figure in sculpture and the use of prostheses in performance. After discovering that Belt Heads can hold a paintbrush with their mouths, they began drawing at exhibitions and performances, but also in the studio." - François Morelli

A major figure in Canadian visual and performance art, François Morelli is recognized as one of the pioneers of relational art. His multidisciplinary practice, which encompasses drawing, printmaking, installation, performance, sculpture and painting, questions the status of the object and the conditions of perception of the work. His work explores notions of passage, circulation and transformation, where the work often becomes the trace of an action or intervention, inscribing in space and time the relationships between the artist, society, individuals and objects. François Morelli lives and works in Montreal.