In the studio with Renata Haar

Being at the Cité allows me to experience the time of the residency as an extended state of meditative attention. Paris is a wonderful place to sharpen one’s awareness of details, colours, subtle nuances, history, time and its cycles, and simply being present.

Living and working in the same space is also a unique experience for me. Sharing 40 square metres with nine marble stones that I personally selected at a quarry in the mountains creates a kind of continuous, intimate conversation with the stones.

Here, many of the distractions and concerns of everyday life seem to fall away. Reducing one’s needs allows more attention to be given to what is essential, to what is not immediately visible or easily expressed, but somehow guides the work.

Being surrounded by a community of artists, while having access to libraries and research materials, has also allowed me to deepen my investigations into Duchamp’s inframince and prehistoric cave art.

What feels particular about this experience is how certain perceptions, intuitions, and inner connections that have always guided my work seem to have become more accessible, perhaps even clearer.

During the residency, I completed an installation presented at Post-Fair Paris, bringing together three marble sculptures titled Gravity 1, 2 and 3, a nine-minute film made from 8mm footage, with sound, titled To Say Goodbye Like a River, and a 290 × 290 cm drawing on leather titled Carcará. I am now returning to the studio to continue working on the remaining six marble stones, each offering a different kind of physical encounter with the material.

I am also developing a new chapter in 8mm film and continuing to draw on leather and on paper treated with rabbit-skin glue. Moving between these materials allows me to explore the ephemeral and the intuitive, abstraction and gesture, and the subtle boundaries between drawing, sculpture, video, painting and the readymade.

I keep returning to the fundamental human impulse to leave a trace, already present in the handprints found in prehistoric caves. Gestures that remain visible across an almost unimaginable distance in time.

I am equally moved by the beauty of the Golden Record sent into space, carrying sounds intended to convey something of life on Earth. I think about the possibility of a visual, perhaps synesthetic equivalent, something that might carry a fragment of our own time.

I am also interested in how encounters with artists, curators and critics might open unexpected perspectives and ways of approaching the work.

Three encounters come to mind, each significant in a different way.

Through a contact provided by the Cité, I had the opportunity to visit the marble workshop inside the Louvre Museum. Alongside learning practical aspects of handling marble and preparing my tools, I encountered an ancient Greek kouros in one of the restoration rooms. Being so close to a sculpture made around 2,500 years ago brought into focus the extraordinary continuity of certain human gestures and techniques across time. I often return to this encounter while working with a hammer and chisel in my studio.

Another meaningful encounter has been with a fellow resident, a writer researching Simone Weil’s writings at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Our conversations around Weil’s philosophy, particularly Gravity and Grace, have enriched my understanding of ideas that are central to the project I am developing here. These exchanges have also opened new directions for my research.