Recent acquisition

Sylvie Blocher

Sylvie Blocher is based in Saint-Denis, France. Her first exhibition, “Hygiènes”, focused on the constraint of bodies in contemporary urban and social space, starting from her position as a woman. This was followed by a series of five “Spectacles pour rendre la vie presentable” (Shows to make life presentable), using performance, “voice carriers” and texts editing with writer Gérard Haller. In the last of these “Spectacles pour rendre la vie presentable”, presented at the Festival d’Avignon in 87, they question the blind spot of modernity: the barbaric industrial extermination of bodies in Nazi concentration camps. Actress Angela Winkler shares a list of men’s and women’s first names in relation to the lists of the dead. Selected in 1988 by American curator Don Cameron and Dutch curator Saskia Boss, she presented the installation “Le grand Atlas” at the Venice Biennale Aperto, with the voice of actress Emmanuelle Riva, in which she worked with materials that challenged the artist’s authority: vapors and fumes. In 1991, she took part in the exhibition “4 Contemporary Artists from France” (AGO, Toronto), where a controversy erupted following a manifesto by artists Daniel Buren and Michel Parmentier in the exhibition catalog, “denouncing the ‘resignation’ of French exhibiting artists in the name of a modernist critique of the institution.” For Sylvie Blocher, this is a breaking point. She responded by questioning a white, colonialist, male-heterosexual modernity. She then abandoned any idea of construction, and decided to use only the video medium to film “uncontrollable material”. Her last constructed work, “Déçue la mariée se rhabilla” (1991, coll. Centre Pompidou), is an abstract luminous form covered with a bridal veil, standing on the floor, which she describes as “full of limited electrical energy that must recharge every night. A work that speaks out against any idea of Eternity”. Her bride, imagined in the form of a deposition, is a manifesto accompanied by eighteen preparatory drawings that question a modernity that has become exclusionary. She advocates “a decolonization of the ego” (I am interested in the decolinization of the ego) 1991. She then launched the concept “Je Nous Sommes” (I We Are) and began a video practice called “ULA, Universal Local Art” (Universal Local Art), which attempts to bend a modernity of authoritarian universalism through the lens of otherness. She then launched the concept “I WE ARE” and began a video practice called ULA, Universal Local Art, which attempts to bend a modernity of authoritarian universalism through the lens of otherness. She opposes mechanisms of control with filmic protocols of emancipation, reparation, the right to say, to invent oneself as other, and advocates a “decolonization of the self”. Her moving images work with unpredictable, fragile human material – the volunteers she films – forcing her to confront ethics and aesthetics. Confronting the imaginations of others, she engages with those she films in “a poetics of relationship” and attempts a different distribution of roles and words. In 1988, Sylvie Blocher also co-founded the “Campement Urbain” collective, which works with architect François Daune on the construction of the I and We outside established norms on urban outskirts, taking inspiration from the archipelago concept developed by philosopher Édouard Glissant, to imagine public spaces as places for encounters and emancipation, not just as spaces for circulation. “Campement Urbain” won the Evens Foundation Art/Community/Collaboration Award in 2002 (APERTO Venice Biennale. 1988; MUKHA), and the Australian Urban Planning Grand Prix in 2012 (MCA, Sydney Opera House), after redesigning the urban plan of the town of Penrith, Western Sydney, based on the stories and rituals of its inhabitants. She showcases her work in national and international museums, as well as in international exhibitions and biennials, including Pusan (South Korea), Alexandria (Egypt), New Delhi (India), Salvador de Bahia (Brazil), Venice Biennale (Italy), Lyon Biennale (France), Santiago de Chile Video Biennale (Chile), Liverpool Biennale (England), and Jafre Biennale (Spain). Her works are in national and international collections such as SFMOMA-San Francisco, MUDAM-Luxembourg, AGO-Toronto, MNBAQ-Québec, NMNM-Monaco, MACS Grand Hornu, Centre Pompidou, FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Alsace, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Rhône-Alpes…