Gaëlle Choisne will present the Frankfurt debut of her long-term project “Temple of Love” (2018-ongoing) and transform the historic Villa 102 into an art space. A meticulous collector of objects acting at the margins of photography, the artist weaves individual memories with social observations to create eclectic installations, videos and performances. Drawing on her personal history and French-Haitian heritage, Choisne’s works often delve into themes of self-healing, spirituality and social interaction. Choisne regards her artistic practice as part of a network of ideas and people, frequently engaging in collaborations and integrating literary and scholarly allusions into her work. For the “To Hide” edition of the long-term project “Temple of Love”, the artist once again refers to a chapter from Roland Barthes’ “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments”. The site-specific installation takes on a new form with each presentation. Choisne developed the exhibition for the first time during her one-year residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, in cooperation with KfW Stiftung.

The flags were inspired by political banners used during elections in Haiti and were made in Port-au-Prince by the graphic designer James Ford Auguste. The bricks reference those used as ballast by Northern European ships deployed in the triangular trade. In the center of the pool is a lingam stone, which holds healing properties and the ability to protect against bad energy.

Presentation with support from Institut Français de Suède
Curator: Lisa Rosendahl
Guest: James Ford Auguste

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Nuit Blanche, the artist invests in Japan the Rohm Theatre in Kyoto and revisits the Temple of Love — Affirmation, originally conceived for the Museum of Modern Art in Paris during the 2020 Parisian event.

In an interplay between interior and exterior, a sound and light installation, at the entrance of the theater, combines the recitation of « decolonial mantras » with lush vegetation. Local medicinal, aromatic, exotic and edible plants are assembled according to the design of permaculture and traditional Creole gardens, respecting their balance and an animist conception of nature. In a scenic space, with original costumes of the artist decorated with Japanese accessories, a dance-performance takes place through the windows. The spirituality emanating from the mantra plants resonates with the sensuality, the vibrations and the body language of the dancers.

After an inaugural voguing performance in Paris, the Kyoto performance is singled out by its reference to butoh, a Japanese contemporary dance that expresses universal concepts and questions the dualities of human/non-human, feminine/masculine, beautiful/ugly, agony/extasy. The Temple of Love blends these universes and energies in a magical, creative and emancipating alchemy, a celebration of the living world that affirms, like Barthes, love as a value.

The performance was realized in collaboration with Daiji Meguro (choreographer and dancer), Moe Matsuki, Sho Takiguchi and Ryonosuke Endo (dancers).
Co-organizer: ROHM Theatre Kyoto (Kyoto City music art cultural Promoting Foundation)
Partner: Musée d’Art moderne de Paris
Concept: Gaëlle Choisne
Stage direction (Kyoto version): Daiji Meguro
Performers: Ryohosuke Endo, Sho Gakiguchi, Moe Matsuki, Daiji Meguro
Curator: Nadia Chalbi

The artist Gaëlle Choisne introduces the living into the rooms of the museum: she welcomes the visitors’ bodies as the very subject of the project and implements the principle of hospitality so precious to the MAC VAL, in order to consider and care for them. Invited to invest the spaces of the museum, Gaëlle Choisne proposes a total project that takes place in her exploration of Roland Barthes’ Fragments d’un discours amoureux, entitled « Temple of Love », a realization implemented for several years in different places as it was for example the case at Bétonsalon, in 2018.

This new occurrence at the MAC VAL, Atopos, is declined in the heart of the exhibition space of the collection « Bare Hands », in front of other works. Through furniture and sculptural devices it proposes forms of reception of the public, inviting them to participate and listen to artistic interventions programmed by the artist: philosopher, artist, musician, anthropologist, masseur… about twenty interventions will take place in these installations that can be activated during one year.

Gaëlle Choisne accompanies the works in the collection with living things, with what is the very essence of humanity: philosophy, thought, contact, the thirst to become, germination, life.
Here, once again, his project is placed under the sign of love and relationships with others, an experience to live love as a political, social and solidarity response.
An ecosystem at the service of the living.

Love, a word that makes us blush. So we translate it into ‘Wicked!’ or into actions.
At the MAC VAL, in Vitry-sur-Seine, I invite all visitors to be careful with this word so delicate that we vulgarise it or do not speak it. Here, it is yours and for you, for all of you, but especially for the mino-rities, for those left behind, for the abandoned, for the sidelined, for the originals. It accompanies your steps and everything you see from me is made with it. I am trying to tell you that you are unique, original and never interchangeable, you are singular creatures to be loved and I invite you to start with yourself. Take this chance to settle down, to feel through the breath of your lives, through the struggles but also through the laughter, through a sigh, a soothing. I offer you spaces in the museum, a lull in a benevolent place, to feel good, to do sport, to find yourself. The museum is indeed a place that is made for this, not only for connoisseurs or professionals, but for all those who want to expe-rience, to feel.Ode to love for all! (Gaëlle Choisne)

Guests
— Les Apprenant*e*s de l’école des actes
— Marie-Carmel Brouard
— Contemporaines
— Gabriel Fontana
— Caroline Honorien
— Nge Lay et Aung Ko
— Roxanne Maillet et Célia Gaultier
— Gloria Maso
— Pascale Obolo et Afrikadaa
— Anouchka Oler Nussbaum
— Elisabetta Potasso
— Emmanuelle Soum

Temple of Love – To Hide at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, is a new phase of Temple of Love – a long-term project aiming at a global reunification of the living through the concept of love. This exhibition, freely inspired by the chapter ‘To hide’ in Roland Barthes A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, is resolutely oriented towards self-recon-struction through the sharing of experience, connec-tion to one’s ancestors, respect for heritage and inner corporal harmony.

With Ahuehuete, Pablo Altar, Arghtee, ASMR STACY, Association Agonessan, Mykki Blanco, Marie-Carmel Brouard, Cardi B, Jean Chesnel, Crystallmess, Virginie Despentes, Sidney Drew, Léo Dupré, Silvia Federici, Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Zoe Leonard, Audre Lorde, Agnes Noel, Euvonie Reynald and Megg Rayara Gomes de Oliveira, Madame Café, Karl Marx, Nicki Minaj, Djibril Sall, Spice, Lorenzo Targhetta, Christiane Taubira, Simone Thiébaut, Assa Traoré, Françoise Vergès, Amber Wagner, Tierra Whack.

Temple of Love – Tutti Sistemati is a commissioned sculptural video installation that introduces a new version of Temple of Love. Inspired by Roland Barthes’s book A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (1977) and the chapter “Tutti sistemati”, this new work advocates for land preservation and promotes an ecological contemplation of our world: it addresses the complex relationship between Normandy and Haiti, revealing the history of Creole gardens, colonial pasts, and mythical tales. Through the perspective of créolité, the artist invites viewers to explore the crossroads of collective and personal histories while considering themes of genealogy, healing, resistance, empowerment, and gender in greater depth. Temple of Love stimulates reflections on the intricacies of this shared history and offers glimpses of hope for a more inclusive and sustainable future. Gaëlle’s guests for Temple of Love – Tutti Sistemati are Arvo Leo and Audrey Parisot. The images for the video are credited to Makoto C. Friedmann.

Gaëlle Choisne is a visual artist who engages with contemporary global issues through her multimedia practice. Her work reflects upon colonial history and the remnants of its political and cultural turmoil and exploitation of nature by incorporating Creole traditions, myths, and popular cultures. Her projects, especially Temple of Love (2022–24), operate as collaborative ecosystems that question societal norms and imagine new possibilities.

The exhibition Temple of Love. Cœur concludes the residency of Gaëlle Choisne (Cherbourg, 1985) at Scuola Piccola Zattere. Here, new commissions, site-specific interventions and existing works by the artist are put in dialogue with a selection of paintings by Haitian artists from the Jean-Marie Drot collection. 

Temple of Love is a long-term project (2018 – ongoing) developing across successive chapters and drawing from Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (1977). Through an approach that combines multiple media, techniques and materials, Choisne builds a progressive, evolving narrative that shapes spaces of coexistence and collaboration, hospitality and affection.

What the artist calls a “temple” is this fluid configuration that is temporarily embedded into the architectural and institutional context of the museum, materially and symbolically turning it into a place where new rules and bonds can emerge. The ritual and sacral connotations are summoned by Choisne not to reproduce the auratic dimen- sion of the museum, which derives from acts of separation and classification, but, on the contrary, to hybridize forms of knowledge that belong to different spheres, cultures and histories. 

In the new chapter of Temple of Love, entitled Cœur after the eponymous entry from Barthes’book, the spiritual and affective connection between the body and the outer world is explored through the symbolism of the house: the architecture of the domestic that hosts, embraces, protects. The exhibition space is reconfigured as a complex ecosystem, each room embodying a chakra, the centers located along the spine that regulate the flow of vital energy in the body. Starting with the heart, positioned at the center of museum space, the exhibition unfolds in two directions creating a circular, immersive flow, an invitation by the artist to a healing procession. The identification between architecture and body resonates in the word Lakay, meaning both house and home in the Creole language, that is depicted as a place of encounters, of spoken words, of intimate moments both sad and joyous in Haitian painting. The homeland of the artist’s mother, and a central reference throughout the artist’s work, Haiti is the guest of honor of this project, invited through the works of eighteen Haitian painters belonging to the private collection of French writer and documentary filmmaker Jean-Marie Drot. The works depict everyday scenes of collective activities and country life, blending with allusions to the ceremonies, rituals and symbols of the Vodou religion. Amplifying the scenes, figures and forms found in the paintings, the exhibition weaves a dense, affectionate and generative dialogue with the spiritual mysticism of Haitian art.

The Jean-Marie Drot collection is an idiosyncratic one comprising more than 500 artworks that Jean-Marie Drot (1929-2015) gathered during his lifetime travelling as a journalist and producer for French television. A pioneer in the use of audiovisual material in culture, Drot became well known thanks to his 1962 series The hot hours in Montparnasse in which he interviewed important figures coming from the Dada and Surrealist movements, such as Man Ray, Cocteau, and Duchamp. However, Drot’s passion focused on naif art, especially self-taught artists, from 1968 when he dis- covered an exhibition catalog with artworks by Yugoslav naif painters. This was the starting point for many adventures that led Drot to seek creative work outside the major artistic movements and Western centers of art, in places such as Bulgaria, Peru, Brazil, Haiti, Greece, Egypt and Japan. Drot’s special interest and expertise in Haitian art led him to direct the video documentary Haiti: A Painted History (1997), and to curate several exhibitions and catalogs, including Journal de voyage en Haïti au pays des peintres de la fête et du vaudou (1974), Haïti: Art Naïf, Art Vaudou (1988) and Haitian Painters: The Encounter of Two Worlds (1992). 

The Drot collection is hosted on the Cycladic island of Ios in Greece in the atypical “house-sculpture” – designed by the Greek artist and his lifelong friend Yannis Yaitis – and in a separate building inside the house complex. It is entitled the Museum of Friendship and, as of today, remains closed to the public. The collection was included in this exhibition as a first attempt at activating it through the prism of contemporary art at the initiative of the curator Eva Vaslamatzi, who has undertaken in-depth research into the Drot collection.

Irene Calderoni and Eva Vaslamatzi