Gaëlle Choisne

Gaëlle Choisne was born in 1985 in Cherbourg (FR), she lives between Paris (FR) and Berlin (DE).

“I have developed a polymorphous visual practice. I create sculptural installations at the crossroads of sculpture and photography. The use of publishing is also a form of expression that extends my idea of the materialization of the image. I establish con-fusions between sculpture and image; photographic supports resemble sculptures. I push the boundaries of photography through blind, organic, and shifting images. I am deeply interested in the epiphany of the image—between its appearance and disappearance. The ‘latent animality’ of sculptural representations stems from the use of salvaged elements, forms with a seemingly brutal character, which generate materialistic antinomies that in turn produce images. I seek out tensions in materials associated with a certain resistance in order to reveal their weaknesses or fragilities. Through this, I evoke architecture, the organic, matter, and waste as tools for reconstruction and construction.

By means of extraction, fragments, borrowings, and samples without direct referents, I propose new reconstructions to be made—moments of micro-histories as a process of supplementing memory through the imaginary. The legacy of anthropological museums, monuments, and steles tied to colonial histories is subtly embedded in the sculptural landscapes I present. Through a lexicon linked to war, and drawing on Western and overseas tales and legends (from Haiti, for instance), I speak of a local exoticism. It’s about revealing traces of a silent History. On this deserted battlefield where all the elements become fictitious documents, only ghosts remain. The body is absent but suggested. The spectator’s body, on the other hand, is involved—invited to confront either an obstacle or a trap. The relationship of domination, and the symbolic elements of power, are evoked.” – Gaëlle Choisne