Exhibition

Curation: Tenzing Barshee.
Invited by Dorothée Dupuis, Céline Kopp and Sandra Patron.
February 14 - April 19, 2015, public opening on February 13, from 6PM
4th floor of the Tour-Panorama, Friche La Belle de Mai

In line with its feminist commitments and with the desire to assert the importance of guiding figures whose recognition today stems more from the artist’s knowledge than from institutional acknowledgment, Triangle France is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Europe of artist Margaret Honda (born in 1961, USA). This outstanding curatorial project has been entrusted to Tenzing Barshee, and we are delighted to announce that the exhibition will have a follow-up in 2016 at Künstlerhaus Bremen.

For nearly thirty years, this iconoclastic artist has challenged our standards of thought and behavior. Using a variety of media, she questions the limits of scientific knowledge and examines the disjunctive and synthetic processes of vision and understanding. This exhibition is organized as part of the 20th-anniversary celebration of Triangle France—a program we aim to be intergenerational and engaged, reaffirming the association’s ongoing critical commitment to the future.

Dorothée Dupuis, Céline Kopp and Sandra Patron

On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Triangle France, Margaret Honda (b. 1961) presents a project that is both a site-specific work and a retrospective approach to her practice.
Since the 1980s, she has been making works that include sculptures, performances for both general and intimate audiences, photography, and, more recently, film. A common thread is the artist’s investigation into the sculptural qualities and attributes of art, which she recognizes as an intrinsic element of all of her production. Invested in a nonlinear and atemporal approach to history, Margaret Honda has made use of biographical elements, reinterpreted previous works—by actually melting down existing sculptures—and highlighted specific modes of cultural production throughout history. In all cases, these initiatives do not stem from a project of nostalgia but rather from an active engagement with historicity, continuously interweaving different points in time to produce work infused with the present.

The room-sized, labyrinthine installation at Triangle France allows you to explore Margaret Honda’s artistic production sites. Eponymously titled Sculpture, its constructed rooms represent all of her previously used studios to scale, arranged in a circular fashion. The collection of rooms creates a retrospective experience of the artist’s practice without—except for the sculpture itself—exhibiting a single artwork. The negative space formed at the center of this circular arrangement acts as a non-representative room. Inside this collateral space premieres one of Margaret Honda’s latest projects, a 16mm film titled Wildflowers. Challenging your imaginative abilities, Sculptures emancipates itself from the literality of representation, suggesting a void not as an empty place but rather a site of powerful production.  

From the outset of her artistic practice, Margaret Honda has been writing about her work. As the third work of Sculptures, Triangle France publishes Writings a comprehensive collection of texts by the artist. Edited by Matthew Evans and designed by Dan Solbach, this signed and numbered edition, co-published by Künstlerhaus Bremen, is a complete written record of the artist’s work.

Tenzing Barshee, curator of the exhibition