Are you Ready to Try the Artist’s Habits? by Emmanuelle Lainé & Benjamin Valenza

Curated by Elise Lammer

April 6 – 28, 2020

Benjamin Valenza, Emmanuelle Lainé

Est–on Prêtes à Endosser les Habits de l‘Artiste ? / Are you Ready to Try the Artist‘s Habits?, 2019

18:47, HD video, Colour with sound, Courtesy of the artist and Labor Zero Labor, Produced in Switzerland and France by Labor Zero Labor

A woman standing in a summarily furnished interior tells in lip-sync about working in an art center. It slowly appears that the speech is made out of the voices of several women, who were asked to share their experiences as institutional art workers. These words were collected during interviews that the duo of artists Lainé Valenza conducted with the femaie employees of a French art centre. Masterfully performed by Kayije Kagame, the single seamless soundtrack suggests that the same story is being told by several voices, yet a sense of institutional unity slowly appears. Selected for their feminist work methodologies, the workers share similar ethical approaches, which inevitably influences how art ultimately is made, communicated and mediated. Suggesting that a multiple yet collective practice of art is possible, the actor incarnates each voice while sporting different outfits that in turn constrain, exhibit or conceal her body. Like an allegorical figure of an ideal art institution, the polyphony is punctuated with sequences of statues and monuments filmed in outdoor public places, as well as archives sequences showing artists and performers at work.

Emmanuelle Lainé (born in 1973) lives in Marseille. Lainé’s complex installations transform the spaces they occupy into unsettling perceptual environments. The artist brings together familiar objects, organic materials and life-sized, floor-to-ceiling imagery to create disorienting scenes that explored industry, display and the contemporary workplace.

Her work is currently shown at BNKR, München and at Fondation Van Gogh, France and has recently been exhibited at Mito Tower Art Center, Japan (2019), Hayward gallery, London( 2018) and Palais de Tokyo(2017), ICA Singapore (2016) , GL Strand, Copenhagen(2015) and Biennale de Lyon, France(2015)

Over the years, Benjamin Valenza has been developing what he describes as “an autonomous media”. Reflecting on the contemporary circulation of images through internet and television, his context-specific projects emerge out of temporary environments, which offer the conceptual backgrounds to produce collective filmed encounters. His work was exhibited amongst others at Den Frie, Copenhagen; Swiss Institute, Rome; Komplot, Brusells; South London Gallery, London; Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris; Forde, Geneva; Form Content, London; Palais de Tokyo, Paris.

Emmanuelle Lainé & Benjamin Valenza, Are you Ready to Try the Artist‘s Habits? 2019, 18:47, HD video, Colour with sound