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

Temple of Love – Absence – La Biennale de Lyon - Gaëlle Choisne

Temple of Love – Absence – La Biennale de Lyon, 2019

Temple of love - Absence
macLYON - Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon
Part of the Biennale de Lyon, Là où les eaux de mêlent (Where water comes together with other water)

With the support of Pixopolitan
In collaboration with Gaillard & Claude

© Blaise Adilon

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The artist Gaëlle Choisne chooses to create a temple of love as a kind of apparition. An entire room of the MAC Museum is occupied by this multifaceted work. The main element, a large greenhouse, houses a device from her exhibition Hybris showing printed panels of images of plants from Haiti, bathed in electrically powered water fountains.

The surrounding part of the greenhouse features large, thick velvet sheets and paintings on the walls on which are sewn or hung various small objects and poor materials – shells, packs of chewing gum, cigarettes, lighter, Malabar tattoos, small pictures, coins, padlocks, condoms, medicines… like a giant coin box. A sculpture of bluish hands with long claws is placed on a table. On the floor, in a corner of the room, a multitude of white fortune cookies made of ceramic contain secret messages. On the floor, in a corner of the room, there is a bar-bed on which various small ceramic glasses and a jug of rum are displayed, and on the different walls, small objects are fixed with a glue gun. The installation is accompanied by the projection of her 25-minute film entitled S’abîmer (to be engulfed) which brings together documentary images of Haiti, television news and an interview with the reading of passages from Fragments d’un discours amoureux de Roland Barthes by the artist herself. The video is in French with French subtitles.

The artist mobilizes the vocabulary of architecture, organic influences, permaculture teachings and an abundance of textile materials to shape a common habitat. Without wanting to literally recreate the material environment in which the poor part of the Haitian population lives, they aim to bring to the viewer’s consciousness condensed images of these living conditions. The big one poses the question of our relationship to nature.

Here, the artist reappropriates the attributes of the temple as well as of the exhibition space: a place of congregation, a place of speech, a place of refuge where the gaze and the discourse are created and shared. This composite, fluid, complex universe, which like a landscape, offers a wealth of details, allowing the visitor to live his own unique experience of the place.

Curators: Matthieu Lelièvre and Palais de Tokyo