For her, “everything is art”. The French sculptor and photographer Gaëlle Choisne loves multidisciplinarity, multitude, hybridization. Born in 1985 in Cherbourg, this daughter of a Haitian mother and a Breton father lives and works between Paris and Berlin. Monday October 14, she received the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize (worth 35,000 euros) at the Center Pompidou in Paris, after having won the Aware Prize in 2021.
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In her mysterious cork and plaster hives and her installations as natural as they are esoteric and improbable, she includes chicken wire, Chinese and Russian cigarettes or other “significant objects” and does not hesitate to project her images on small enameled ceramic rocks. The titles of his films announce the eclecticism of his themes, between testimonies, archives, fiction and songs: Love letter to La Siren, Creole Garden in Normandy Or Primitive accumulation. With her work, she visibly touched the jury who honored her with the Marcel Duchamp Prize for work that is anchored in the issues of our time.
RFI : At the center of your work is hybridization. What is the most important thing for you in this hybridization? ?
Gaëlle Choisne : It’s crossbreeding. The mix of cultures, because we are a mix, a great mix and this is what I try to transmit also through my personal experience, but also through my works.
Africa plays a certain role in your work. For example, when you create spaces, refuges, in Safe Space for a passing history – Age of Aquarius 99999 (2024), one of your works currently exhibited at the Center Pompidou, we can discover “La Congolaise – extra fine soap”, a snippet of an old advertisement. And your artistic work is in line with Afrofuturism.
In fact, I am talking about decolonization and colonization. I used colonial archives. Turns out I found this “La Congolaise” soap. I am very interested in everyday objects which say a lot about our societies, such as, for example, packaging. I use colonial archives, but I also try to decolonize, so to try to open these things, that is to say, to show how it all fits together and becomes a kind of big mixture to be repaired too. . That’s also the intention.
Your first reaction after receiving the Marcel Duchamp prize was to talk about “ a world turned upside down on all sides “, but also of a “ moment of solidarity and love “. The title of your work The Age of Aquarius also refers to the beginning of a new era. Is this an optimistic work in a gloomy world ?
It’s a way of planting seeds in people’s heads. I am an optimist by nature and I try to share my optimism of focusing on things that could be positive or that could help us overcome these challenges.
