In October 2023, Brussels-based French artist Elise Peroi, the first resident of the Arles house, will develop the project entitled Nouer une cabane (tying a hut), inspired by the houses of the Camargue gardians. It’s an opportunity to think of textiles as nomadic, breathable architecture, working with pieces of varying inclinations. The artist is inspired by the rudimentary nature of the gardian’s hut and other trades, and the possibility of using local materials. This project is an extension of her practice, which for several years has combining ancestral weaving techniques with notions of space, landscape and habitat.
“I would then like to imagine spaces where landscape and habitat become one, seeking to invert what is in the service of: the role of subject and support, body and décor, in order to find points of balance. I’d like to experiment and propose points of encounter between subject and support, body and décor, presence and absence, by working on a project combining textile installations and bodily practice, or its very absence. I’d like to suggest ways of balancing the space we inhabit with the space we think we inhabit.” Elise Peroi
Eugénie Lefebvre, co-founder of La Madeleine, Arles and President of Printemps de Septembre, will accompany this residency for two months. The project will be presented during the summer of 2024.
Elise Peroi (1990, Nantes) lives and works in Brussels. A graduate of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, her work is inspired by the techniques of weaving, tapestry and textile arts, for which the notion of gesture and “making” acquires as much value as the result. The artist has taken part in numerous group exhibitions since 2015 in France and Belgium (Eleven Steens, Brussels; Boghossian Foundation, Brussels; Bailly Foundation, Lugano; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome). She is regularly invited for residencies as part of her work as a visual artist and performer, and collaborates with various choreographers, playwrights and musicians. In 2021, her work is presented in two concomitant solo exhibitions (Botanique Galerie, Brussels and La Tour à Plomb, Brussels), while the CACC in Clamart devotes a solo exhibition to her following her residency at the Academia Belgica in Rome. Elise Peroi has received the Prix d’excellence from the City of Brussels (2015), the Young Belgium Talents Prize from The Affordable Art Fair Brussels (2017) and the Prix de la Fondation Charles Oulmont, Paris (2018).