INTERVIEW
As part of your residency at the Cité internationale des arts, in partnership with the Fondation Culture & Diversité, you were accompanied in your creation by a curator who is a member of C-E-A / French Organization of Curators. How did this accompaniment take place?
"I was accompanied by Alexandra Goullier Lhomme (interview below) with whom we not only worked on the questions of the September exhibition, but also on methodologies. We did a complete review of my work, my files, portfolio, CV and presentation text. Our exchanges around my artistic practice, allowed me to clarify certain points, to take a step back on others. It was a very important meeting in my career, and I am really happy about it.
During these last few months, thanks to the different support systems put in place, with the C&D foundation, C-E-A and the Cité internationale des arts, I have really professionalized myself, I feel like I have acquired tools, which will be useful in my next residencies and exhibitions."
Do you have an anecdote or a highlight of your residency to share?
"One of the highlights of this accompaniment was, in my opinion, the moment of the opening of my studio, which we had entitled "let's walk around". It was a very interesting event, where I was able to share the work provided during my residency at the Cité internationale des arts. The open studio gave rise to very enriching exchanges, with Alexandra on the one hand during the installation, but also with the visitors. It was an important moment of the residency, which allowed me to get a glimpse of what the September exhibition might look like."
You will open an exhibition at the Cité internationale des arts in September 2022 during the Traversées du Marais festival. How did this project develop during your residency?
"At first, I started by experimenting a lot of things, I worked on different projects and techniques at the same time. For example, I worked on several paintings on wood representing sketches painted in oil, weaving narrative links between each painting to create a fiction. I also started the production of two large formats on loose fabric, a parquet floor printed on kraft paper in linocut and an animation video.
All these elements were worked on simultaneously. I went back and forth, jumping from practice to practice and project to project (which is an integral part of my creative process and helps me create a cohesive set of pieces).
After this phase of experimentation, we exchanged a lot with Alexandra about my work, which helped me to affirm certain choices. We then, for my participation in the Open Workshops evening, worked on the installation of the pieces in the space, which allowed me to project myself for the September exhibition and to take stock of the elements to be added, and improved."
BIOGRAPHY
After a first year of preparatory class at the Ateliers d'arts plastiques d'Evry, Lucie Postel entered the École nationale supérieure d'art - Villa Arson, from which she graduated in 2020. She now lives and works in the Paris region since 2021.
During her years of study, she had the opportunity to develop a plastic work composed of several techniques. Painting (on wood or canvas) is the heart of her practice. It allows her to unfold a narrative inspired by the world of tales. The result is a series of surrealist paintings that explore various issues around the intimate, the house as a refuge, but also as a disturbing place. Through her paintings, Lucie Postel creates worlds where interiors and exteriors are mixed, and where the real and the imaginary merge.
Her video work, or animated images, allows her to put her frozen sketches in motion. Indeed, Lucie Postel's paintings are the raw material of her videos, she extracts from them landscapes and characters that she animates in order to develop the narrative framework of the sketches.
In parallel, she also works with linocuts which allow her to create patterns that she can then print in series to make wallpaper, a floor or a hanging in order to create immersive installations and to transform exhibition spaces into intimate spaces.
You are a member of C-E-A / French Organization of Curators, how did you come to accompany Lucie Postel during her residency?
"As part of the partnership between the Cité internationale des arts and the Fondation Culture & Diversité, C-E-A launched a call for applications to accompany Lucie Postel during her four-month residency. So I simply answered this call for applications published in the C-E-A newsletter.
This call seemed to me very interesting on two points. First, from a methodological point of view, C-E-A had decided to publish this call for applications in a transparent way. The portfolio of the artist we were to accompany was attached to the call and thus allowed us to quickly understand which profile we would be dealing with. From a more global point of view, this mission interested me because the accompaniment of emerging artists is really what nourishes me in my job."
What did this accompaniment entail?
"The accompaniment took the form of a series of meetings with the artist in a horizontal relationship and without any judgment. Each appointment was an opportunity to discuss with Lucie Postel about her work, to set up more concrete exercises (making a portfolio, a CV, a budget, a job application, a studio visit, etc.), to share our experiences and feelings about the art world, and above all, to plan what we might need to discuss the next time.
I think that this accompaniment was very much based on listening to the needs formulated by the artist. Lucie's main expectation was to develop a more constructed discourse on her work and in the end this is something that came about very spontaneously through exchange. By focusing on more concrete and factual exercises, which are rarely dealt with in art schools, this finally allowed Lucie to gain confidence in herself and to develop a real discourse about her work. I see this accompaniment as a crutch that helps to consolidate the places that are still a little too fragile, in order to professionalize herself on the one hand, but above all to have the strength to impose herself in an environment that is not always easy."
What do you think are the advantages of this support system offered as part of the "Cité internationale des arts x Fondation Culture & Diversité" residency program?
"I think that the main advantage of this support is the luxury of being able to take time. The time to exchange, to get to know each other, the time to doubt, to try and to fail, on both sides.
Within the framework of this accompaniment, a hanging was to be created. With Lucie, we decided jointly to see this event as an exercise where the path, the reflections, the attempts were more important than the result. So we tried things in her studio for several days, and this exercise really taught us about each other and about the different ways of hanging in Lucie Postel's work.
I think that this accompaniment is above all a human accompaniment and that it is important to note that the learning goes both ways."
BIOGRAPHIE
Alexandra Goullier Lhomme is an independent curator. Her curatorial research focuses on the porosity of borders, whether they are geographical, social, temporal or linguistic. Defying any notion of category and questioning any definition are the tools that border her practice. These reflections have led her to take a particular interest in the medium of performance art in its ability to navigate between the arts and to slip between categories - always in motion. Her entire practice, however, is rooted in a poetic and political field where the plurality of visions, voices and mediums is central.
Alexandra Goullier Lhomme holds a master's degree in Fine Arts and Art Sciences (Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne / New York University) and a professional master's degree in curatorial studies (Sorbonne - Paris 4). She has worked as an independent curator, curatorial assistant, production manager and artist's assistant in New York, London and Paris. As a curatorial assistant, she has notably worked for the contemporary art program of the Château de Versailles (2018-2019) and at the Palais de Tokyo (2017 - 2018). More recently (2021), she was a research fellow for the brain space laboratory of the IAC - Institut d'art contemporain de Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes. Her independent projects include Nourrir le terreau, Villa Belleville (Paris, 2022); Date(s), a posted exhibition (2021); Tongue on tongue, nos salives dans ton oreille, Galerie Allen, Cité Internationale des arts - Site de Montmartre, KADIST & espaces publics (Paris, 2019); Nos ombres devant nous, Fondation d'Entreprise Ricard (Paris, 2017).
Co-director of Liquid Ground // Swapping Tongues, a curatorial initiative with the ambition to promote ephemeral arts and publish artists' writings, Alexandra Goullier Lhomme is also co-curator of the 2023-2024 season of Orange Rouge and an active member of curatorial hotline (https://curatorialhotline.art/), a collective that offers e-appointments of individualized advice to artists in a horizontal and supportive relationship. From 2018 to 2020, she was co-director of prologue, a curatorial collective supporting performance art.