Tania Mouraud
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Tania Mouraud | |
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Born | Paris, France | January 2, 1942
Nationality | French |
Education | Autodidact |
Known for | Video, photography, installation and sound performances |
Awards | National Order of Merit (France), Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur |
Tania Mouraud,[1] (born January 2, 1942, in Paris), is a contemporary French video artist, and photographer.
Early life[]
An autodidact, Tania Mouraud began her artistic career very young with Initiation rooms, spaces dedicated to introspection. In the 1970s, through an analytical and intellectual approach, Her work combined art and philosophy at the same time based primarily on words, and later on their typography.
During the same period, she continued to grow her series of photographs. In the late 1990s, she created her first videos. The themes of anguish and responsibility in the world are the basis of her videos and draw inspiration from her life that has been marked by mourning; "... In my artistic work, from the beginning, this obsession is really something fundamentally intimate that I share with the public."[2]
Working in the video field has encouraged Tania Mouraud to radicalize her work through sound. After some concerts with the group Unité de Production she founded in 2002, Tania Mouraud embarked on live solo performances. Her video installations, including Ad Infinitum (2008)[3] or Ad Nauseam (2014)[4] and her collaboration with the Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique (Ircam) marked a turning point in her work.
March 4, 2015, marks the debut of Tania Mouraud. A Retrospective. This is the first major monographic exhibition of the artist and was shown at the Centre Pompidou-Metz.[5] This retrospective will be accompanied by nine other exhibitions in Metz in nine different places like the Regional Contemporary Art Fund of Lorraine (Frac Lorraine) and at the Galerie d'Exposition de l'Arsenal, creating a veritable journey through the city.
Biography[]
A cosmopolitan youth[]
Tania Mouraud was born in Paris on January 2, 1942. She is the daughter of Martine Mouraud, journalist, publicist turned businesswoman, and writer. Her Romanian-born father, Marcel Mouraud, was a lawyer and collector of modern art.[6] Both her parents were engaged in the Résistance.
She was exposed to art at an early age by her family environment. She lived in England and then in Germany, where she discovered the most avant-garde of artistic forms. She took influence from interacting with members of the group Zero, Beuys, John Cage, Gregory Corso, John Coltrane, and she befriended Gotthard Graubner and Reiner Ruthenbeck.
In the late 1960s, she lived in New York, where she met Dennis Oppenheim, and came into contact with the New York art scene.
Her first exhibition took place in 1966 at the Zunini gallery in Paris where she exhibited her Peintures médicales. "If my painting is intentionally schematic it is because I want to escape the pathos in the search of precision. I like that which is clear. Feelings are dangerous; the object is defined, reassuring. If one day I decide to paint the human figure, it will be as an object. "[7]
In 1968, after returning from Documenta IV, Tania Mouraud publicly burned all of her paintings.
Initiation Rooms[]
In 1968, Tania Mouraud created her first environments, called "Initiation Rooms". It is composed of glossy white spaces which combine to bring oneself toward introspection. Understanding the space in a psychosensory fashion creates perceptions of self-awareness. These environments are preceded musical performances by Pran Nath, Ann Riley and Terry Riley and La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela.
Tania Mouraud considers that these spaces are like a room added to our apartments: "An extra space for an extra soul" says Pierre Restany.[8] Tania Mouraud followed a mathematical logic curriculum at Paris 8 University, then leaving for India in Kerala for six years. She still spends six months a year there.
The Work of Art as an analytical proposition[]
In 1975, Tania Mouraud created in situ installations called "Art Spaces" in which short phrases, written on plastic construction sheeting the size of the wall, question the conditions of visual perception and lead the viewer to a vertiginous awareness from where he can see the depth of what he is doing.
Tania Mouraud continued this theme when she founded the group TRANS with Thierry Kuntzel then with Jon Gibson throughout the installations. Tania Mouraud then exhibited at PS1 in New York where she met Dara Birnbaum and Dan Graham. That same year she began teaching at the Regional School of plastic expression in Tourcoing France .
During this period, she began her famous Wall Paintings[9] which were huge black painted letters that were stretched, straight, and very close together to the point of almost being illegible. They form a word or sometimes a phrase, such as "I Have a Dream". In 1989, "WYSIWYG" (What you see is what you get) was exhibited at the BPI of the Centre Georges-Pompidou where "the first of the Wall Paintings of Tania Mouraud concealed the slogan of a well-known brand of computer beneath its lofty appearance".
While she displayed her Wall Paintings series within the art school where she teaches, Tania Mouraud transmitted her vision of the responsibility of the artist facing history:[10] "With this exhibition, I hear students ask the same question I ask myself: what does it mean to be an artist in '92? In 1992, when there are three million people unemployed in a manner seemingly excluding them from society, and that we see the reappearance of the specter of racism? Then there was the phrase, "I have a dream" written in strongly elongated and somewhat illegible lettering, but there will always be someone to decipher them. I speak for that person. It's a secret. "[11]
She exhibits in many art centers in France, England, Canada and the United States.
Photography[]
In the mid-1980s, various photographic series began emerging, including Made in Palace, composed of black and white photos taken during "gay parties" at a Parisian club showing turbulent and multisensory spaces in blurry images. For the artist, there is a connection between painting and photography. Other series appear until 1992, consisting of pictures of kitsch objects in different places.
In 2008, continuing with her photographic paintings, Tania Mouraud presented the new series "Borderland", displaying a reflection of landscapes of "round balers" of straw. Other series she created include Rubato, created on rubber tree plantations in Kerala. Désastre centers on the gaps in forests created by deforestation or Balafres showing quarries in Germany.
Videos and Installations[]
For the artist, the practice of "the sequential image" has long been set aside but it was during the 1990s that Tania Mouraud gradually became interested in video. "I have become accustomed to walking with a camcorder and, little by little, the idea has emerged." It was the 2000s that marked a turning point for the artist where video became an important part of her work.
Among the main creations:
- "Sightseeing" 2002. A foggy winter landscape, shot through a misty window, unfolds before our eyes, escorted by the incisive air of a klezmer clarinet. For seven minutes the road is an anguished climb to a stop, where finally, in front, a path firmly leads our gaze to a place where we will not approach. We then see that it is the concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof, in Alsace.[12][13] "The memory then falsely induces us to the illusion of a train journey, while signs of a car trip are present in the image. "
- "La Curée", 2003. Hunting dogs slowly and sensually devour raw meat. "This film is an ode to life. It is an image of violence, but in reality, when you look, it is the skin, the hair, it is a choreography of the body ... The dogs are happy because this is their reward. They do not seem mean. This is perhaps the violence of eroticism ... "
- "Le verger", 2003. Images of flowers in vibrant colors alternate with images of war at a pace difficult to follow and in a heavy and metallic air, punctuated by harrowing cries.[14] Le Verger was immediately exhibited at the Fonds régional d'art contemporain (Frac) in Lower Normandy.
- "La Fabrique", 2006. Video installations, filmed in India, which will be exhibited in several cities in France including the Foire Internationale d'Art Contemporain (Fiac) curated by the Dominique Fiat gallery, and also in California, Canada and finally in St. Petersburg. "The faces of 108 male and female workers on multiple monitors and the deafening sound of working looms create in the visitor a sensation of mechanical work. The dislocated bodies of these workers are the engine of this strange fabric ..."[15]
- "Roaming", 2009. Video installation on display at the musée de la chasse et de la nature in Paris.
In 2008, a press release for the opening of Roaming, Borderland we read that this creation "is considered a testimony of her exceptional mastery of the art of video. Shot in black and white, the dark undergrowth of images and watchtowers are reworked and almost become abstract, and then are accompanied by an acoustic creation that accentuates their dramatic character. Captured at twilight and magnified by the work of the artist, these pieces of nature become metaphors for the human condition, violence, loneliness and death ".[16]
- "Ad Infinitum" 2009. Huge video installation in the chapel of the oratory of Nantes. Projected inside the chapel, the filmed whales almost appear and disappear into a dark and cloudy water. For Tania Mouraud, "The whole piece evokes the plea of the living, the groaning of nature that begs us to stop the ecological carnage as well as the moans of our inner child as we face the unknown, the loss of communication and of love. " "The sequence of Ad Infinitum is a choreography"
- "Once upon a time", 2012. Gigantic projection on the City Hall of Toronto during the Nuit Blanche in 2012. "Once Upon a Time shows the mechanistic universe attacking the living, and we sense, at the moment the saw cuts into the tree, that the saw enters our own body."
- "Ad Nauseam" 2014. Huge video triptych at the Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne. | Projected in a huge room, three side-by-side videos show a book recycling plant. Videos are devoid of any human presence, we see a series of machines that pile and then grind thousands of books. The installation is accompanied by a sound creation by Tania Mouraud done in collaboration with IRCAM. A random droning sound taken from the sounds of grinding machines is constantly played.
Sound and Sound Performances[]
In 2002, Tania Mouraud founded the musical experimentation group " Unité de Production " with Christian Atabekian, Ruben Garcia, Pierre Petit, Cyprien Quairiat, Marie-Odile Sambourg, Sylvain Souque and Baptiste Vandeweydeveldt.
Then it follows a musical course via the Internet at the Berklee College of Music. Since J.I.T. in Brest (2008),[15] she performed live solo improvisations accompanying her videos at the Béton Salon in Paris, and during the same year at the Centre d'art passerelle in Brest, musée de la chasse et de la nature in Paris and at the Lieu unique in Nantes, during the Nuit Blanche 2012 at Gare d'Austerlitz as well as the Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne (Mac/Val) during her exhibition of Ad Nauseam in 2014.
A Social Art[]
In 1977, Tania Mouraud organized her first "City performance": 54 4x3 meter billboards on which the word "NI" is written and posted in several Parisian arrondissements. "Absolute negation, a denial, all the more disturbing, when it does not say what it is targeting. This seems to be resistance to the usual forms of advertising discourse, and the market sphere in whose service it is placed" writes Arnauld Pierre.
In 1993, Tania Mouraud directed "Apartment 374", an ongoing intervention in an apartment of the l'Unité d'habitation by Le Corbusier in Firminy. The codified signs of nomads are sandblasted onto the windows of the living room, turning it into a "welcoming home". For the duration of the exhibition, croissants were distributed free to the public.
In 1996, she scattered 4000 small medals marked with the word love on the streets of New York, at the Fondation Cartier and at the Mirabelle Festival in Metz.
That same year, she exhibited Le Silence des héros for the Occupied Territories exhibition in Zweibrücken, Germany. Along the walls of the room, red and black flags are rolled up and placed against the wall.
Permanent Installations[]
- WYSIWYG (1989–2007)
– Wall painting, Bibliothèque publique d'information, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris, France
- La Curée (2004)
– Installation vidéo, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, château de Chambord, France
- HCYS? (2005)
– Impression sur bâche, collection FRAC, Metz, France
- DDDDLH (2006–2008)
– Bas-relief, commande du Conseil général du Val-de-Marne dans le cadre du Percent for Art, collège Fernande-Flagon, Valenton, France
Date | Title | Type |
---|---|---|
2001 | Invitation | DVD Video |
2002 | Sightseeing | DVD Video |
2003 | Le Verger | DVD Video Installation |
2004 | Myriam Hamagdalit | DVD Video |
2004 | La Curée (The Curry) | DVD Video |
2005 | Momentum | Performance Video |
2005 | Or Donc | DVD Video |
2005 | Prime Time | DVD Video |
2006 | Ballads | DVD Video |
2006 | Façade | Installation video |
2006 | La Fabrique | DVD Video |
2007 | Notée | iPod Video |
2008 | Roaming | Installation Video |
2009 | Ad Infinitum | Installation Video |
2011 | 'Once upon a time' | Installation Video |
2014 | Ad Nauseam | Installation Video |
Exhibitions[]
Writings on Tania Mouraud[]
References[]
- ^ "Tania Mouraud", Wikipédia (in French), August 26, 2020, retrieved September 29, 2020
- ^ Mouraud, Tania (2010). "At the Core". École Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Montpellier Agglomération: 64. ISBN 978-2-916-336-11-4.
- ^ Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes et Fage éditions (2009). Ad Infinitum Tania Mouraud. Nantes. ISBN 978-2-84975-169-5.
- ^ Mouraud, Tania (2014). "Ad Nauseam". Mac/Val. Paris: 255. ISBN 978-2-916324-81-4.
- ^ "Expositions: Tania Mouraud. Une rétrospective". Centre Pompidou-Metz: https://web.archive.org/web/20150508182819/http://www.centrepompidou-metz.fr/tania-mouraud-une-r-trospective.
- ^ Mischie, Dana (July 11, 2017). "Interviu Tania Mouraud". Adevărul (in Romanian). Retrieved July 16, 2017.
- ^ Pierre, Arnauld (2004). "Tania Mouraud". Flammarion. Paris.
- ^ "One More Night". Galerie Rive Droite. Paris. 1970.
- ^ "Tania Mouraud". Éditions Flammarion. textes de Arnauld Pierr. 2004.
- ^ Chaudin, Nicolas (2014). "Tania Mouraud". Exhausted Laughters. Cite journal requires
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(help) - ^ "Tania Mouraud : Fait main : exposition". École régionale d'expression plastique. Tourcoing: 28. 1992.
- ^ Crenn, Julie (September 30, 2014). "Tania Mouraud, Exhausted Laughters, Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Etienne" (in French). ArtPress. Archived from the original on May 18, 2015.
- ^ Tronche, Anna (March 2015). "Tania Mouraud, méditation perpétuelle". ArtPress. 420.
- ^ "Expositions archivées – Tania Mouraud: Exhausted laughters". Musée d'art moderne et contemporain. Saint-Étienne, France. Archived from the original on April 24, 2015.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Kremeier, Ulrike. "J.I.T. – Just in Time – Tania Mouraud – Dossier de Presse, Exposition 11 Septembre – 13 Décembre 2008" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on April 24, 2015.
- ^ "Tania Mouraud Roaming, Borderland" (in French). November 17, 2008. Archived from the original on May 18, 2015. Retrieved April 30, 2015.
- ^ "Tania Mouraud investit le Centre Pompidou-Metz pour une rétrospective inédite". Franceinfo (in French). March 3, 2015. Retrieved May 15, 2021.
- ^ review by Julie Crenn in Art press #417
External links[]
- 1942 births
- Living people
- 20th-century French women artists
- 21st-century French women artists
- Artists from Paris
- French conceptual artists
- French people of Romanian descent
- Women conceptual artists