Gaëlle Choisne | À l'oeuvre 2021
Sensitive to contemporary issues, Gaëlle Choisne's practice reflects the complexity of the world, its political and cultural disorder, whether it be the overexploitation of nature, its resources or the vestiges of colonial history, where esoteric Creole traditions, myths and popular cultures are mixed.
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 Initiated from Roland Barthes' unpublished essay on love, Fragments d'un discours amoureux (1977), Gaëlle Choisne adds a political dimension to the concept of love by paying homage to invisibilised bodies, minority and fragile souls as well as dispossessed hearts.
Temple of Love is an evolving project that defines itself through its modes of appearance and genesis according to its invitations and location.
Transcript
I am a visual artist, I make sculpture, video and more broadly installations.
I like to work with inspirations like architecture, design and sound as well, light - these are elements that allow me to push my installations towards immersive landscapes.
I call it almost “Creole gardens” where I mix ready-made, objects that I have made but that seem to be found, archives, affective and subjective documents that speak of a colonial history or a way of decolonising contemporary narratives.
The Temple of Love project has a new iteration in New York for the New Museum Triennial where I propose a new chapter punctuated by Roland Barthes' A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. I transpose it to questions of love as a political form of resistance and a response to a cleavage, to a nauseating racist, hetero-patriarchal climate.
Love to Love is the chapter I'm going to present in New York, so affirmation of love as an object. It is a rather strange question: to love love.