Artists in residence

VISUAL ARTS
INSTALLATION
 

Visual artist Clément Verger (born in France in 1988) questions the apparent wilderness of the landscapes that surround us. From its begi­nning, mankind has shaped the land to suit its needs and desires, levelling coasts, carving valleys and planning forests. 

In his project Endeavour Clément Verger isolates a specific example of the larger phenomenon representative of the Anthropocene Epoch, that is the transportation and implantation of species across the world. The Eucalyptus tree and its introduction in Europe becomes a case study, a tool to analyse the complex patterns in man’s influence on its environment.

During his residency at the Cité internationale des arts he will be developing the research for his next long term project, an exploration of the unique ecosystem of Ascension Island.

Starting from September 2018, Clément Verger will be resident at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid. 

Steeve Verin, born in Guadeloupe in 1991, is a painter and illustrator who graduated from the École nationale supérieure d’art décoratif de Limoges (ENSA).

In the tradition of Rebeyrolle and Bacon, Steeve Verin represents human faces with distorted features, colored and blurred portraits that create a link between presence and absence. They are the result of buried memories, hidden as a kind of reminiscence. These hideous faces show a reality buried under appearance, faces where all harmony rendered by the regularity of the lines disappears to leave place to contours in deliquescence, as if liquefying like deforming mirrors. The fundamental question for the artist is: are we free to show ourselves as we are?

Steeve Verin questions his relationship to otherness and to the world, but also his relationship to himself. He tries to reveal the feeling of inadequacy stemming from the glance of the other, but also the feeling of incomprehension in front of what the other lets us see of himself.

With his work, the artist also questions the veracity images. Isn’t our image polished by the diktats of society? How can we see beyond what we want to show? What if everything was only a matter of appearance? What if everything was all staged?

Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro is a curator, artist and environmental engineer. He lives and works between Paris and London. His transdisciplinary practice develops collective forms of action and education in relation to the socio-ecological mutations of territories.

His work has been presented at the ZKM Karlsruhe, the Taipei Biennale, the Oslo Triennial and in various international institutions. In 2018, in Dakar, he has initiated in collaboration with the artist Hamedine Kane l’École des Mutants, a collaborative art and research platform on education and political utopia in a postcolonial context.

Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro is fascinated by millet and other “small grains”: for him, these forgotten cereals, discarded by techno-scientific modernity, embody a continuous resistance to homogenization, imperialism and patriarchal oppression. It is also a resilient plant that, in an increasingly dry and unstable climate, could play a key role in the future of agriculture and enhance food sovereignty. Advocating alternative worldviews, his project attempts to develop an agrocosmology of millet, in connection with peasant communities concerned with their survival. Based on an in-depth investigation by interviews and with archives of specialised institutions, his project will include a plastic creation, somatic research and a dinner-performance.

Born in 1981 in Leuven, Belgium, Els Vermang is an artist and curator who lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. 

Her artistic work questions contemporary aesthetics and semiotics, from an algorithmic and conceptual point of view. Her curatorial work extends this investigation, crossing different generations and establishing a dialogue between traditional and experimental art.

The project ‘Ω’ contemplates the topology of space. Topology is a branch of mathematics that deals with properties describing how a space is composed and how it is preserved when deformed. This topic, which has a mathematical, quantum physical and philosophical dimension, originated with Euclid and deals with the question of whether the universe is finite or infinite. Since light always travels in a straight line, it always returns to its starting point within this space and causes light reflections; the so-called cosmic folds and reflections. ‘Ω’ contemplates these cosmic folds and reflections by means of a series of simple tessellations of the two-dimensional grid and its transpositions into complex three-dimensional motifs. This abstract geometric form language is inspired by the surface of the grid and the process of folding and knotting. Aesthetics and technology are thus inextricably linked, and ‘Ω’ is part of an investigation into the logical control of a design process in order to achieve an objective aesthetic result.