Solo show

Gäelle Choisne (1985, FR) lives and works in Paris. Sensitive to contemporary issues, Gaëlle Choisne’s practice considers the complexity of the world, its political and cultural disorder, whether it be the over-exploitation of nature, its resources, or the vestiges of colonial history, where Creole esoteric traditions, myths and popular cultures mingle. Her projects are conceived as ecosystems of sharing and collaboration, pockets of «resistance» where new possibilities are created, notably with the «Temple of Love» project. Initiated from Roland Barthes’ original essay on love, «Fragments d’un discours amoureux» (1977), Gaëlle Choisne adds a political dimension to the concept of love by paying homage to invisible bodies, minority and fragile souls, and dispossessed hearts. «Temple of love » is an evolutionary project defining itself through its modes of appearance and genesis according to its invitations and its location. The works/installations of Gaëlle Choisne have been exhibited in many institutions: (Vitry-sur-Seine), Centrale Powerhouse (Montreal), CAFA Museum (Beijing), Pera Museum (Istanbul), MAM - Musée d’art moderne de Paris, Musée Fabre (Montpellier), Zacheta Gallery (Warsaw), The Mistake Room (Los Angeles), Bétonsalon (Paris), Gr_und project space (Berlin), MAMO - Centre d’art de la Cité radieuse de Marseille, La Villette x Pompidou (Paris), Centre d’art contemporain La Halle des bouchers (Vienne), Musée archéologique Henri-Prade (Lattes), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon etc. She has also participated in several biennials and triennials: 15th Gwandju Biennial (2024), 3rd Toronto Biennial of Art (2024), 5th New Museum Triennial (2021), 11th International Biennial of Contemporary Art (GIBCA), 13th International Biennial of Lyon (2015), 12th Havana Biennial (2015), Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017) and 14th Curitiba Biennial (2017). She has been part of many residency programs in France and internationally such as “Meeting Points collaboration” with CCA -Campus Caraïbéen des Arts (Martinique), Bethanian-KW (Berlin), the Rijksakademie (Amsterdam), Atelier Van Lieshout (Rotterdam), the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris and OPTICA & Art3 Valence (Montreal). In 2024, Gaëlle Choisne won the Marcel Duchamp Prize and, in 2021, the AWARE Prize. In 2019, she is nominated for the Ricard Foundation Prize and the Sam Art Project. Gaëlle Choisne is represented by the gallery Air de Paris, Romainville (FR).

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Aquarium Biennial Fair Fruits Installation Love Performance Plants Sculpture Shells Stèles Temple of Love Videos Workshop

Siren Songs, Villa Medici - Gaëlle Choisne

Siren Songs, Villa Medici, 2024

Group exhibition curated by Sam Stourdzé and Caroline Courrioux with the artists:

Mounir Ayache
Bianca Bondi
Madison Bycroft
Valentin Noujaïm
Monira Al Qadiri
Hera Büyüktasciyan
Alex Cecchetti
Jumana Emil Abboud
Klodin Erb
Simone Fattal
Estrid Lutz
Rose-Lynn Fisher
Yiannis Maniatakos
Lou Masduraud
Raffaela Naldi Rossano
Ariana Papademetropolous
Laure Prouvost
Pamela Rosenkranz
LaToya Ruby Frazier
Bassem Saad
Chiyuki Sakagami
Himali Singh Soin
Emilija Skarnulyte
Kusukazu Uraguchi

Featured artwork :
PERMANENT STATE OF LIVING, 2024
16/9, digital and super-8 digitised, colour, sound, 08'00"

Credits: French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici © Daniele Molajoli

Work produced with the support of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici.
Courtesy of the artist and Air de Paris, Romainville, Grand Paris

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On the ground and in the atmosphere, as both an element and a resource, water constitutes us and overflows the world. Protean in form – rain, seas, droplets, dew, streams, clouds, fog, and tears – it is the essential source of all life. Diverted, extracted, and polluted, water has now become a vital issue in the ongoing ecological crisis. But although it has been conquered, the abyssal depths remain today more mysterious than the Moon, land of dreams, inhabited by fantastic monsters.

This exhibition follows the cycle of water, from sunken civilizations to ritual practices and the troubled waters of trade routes. The hybrid figure of the siren or mermaid, by turns malevolent and protective, half woman, half animal, acts as a guide to navigate between these worlds, from the depths to the surface. Her ambivalence resonates with that of water, a space of metamorphoses, between waters of rejuvenation and of doom.

The show invites us to explore the different states of water through the artists’ eyes, from its representation to its political implications, from the commodity transformed into a resource to the metaphorical quest for its source. Diving into this liquid world opens up a host of contradictions, when tales of water’s origins intermingle with those that conjure up future times in which it threatens us with flooding and drought, and sea levels rise while rivers run dry.

“Mermaids are part of our feminist history, and losing sight of this belonging leads us to consider them without correlating them to gender, species, race, humanity, (…) Mermaids force us to pay attention to the question of becoming, to that of life in threads of water that make the world permeable and connected, outside any fantasy of total purification. This should serve not as a model, but as a political, artistic, academic and, above all, ethical direction: becoming-sirens are intimately linked to our futures and to the reinvention of the subject in the age of our tragic ecologies”.

Myriam Bahaffou