Laure Prouvost:
Oma-je
fr-fr-from the depths of my heart
to the depths of the sea
from high in the clouds, to my brain set free.
in the womb of this galaxy
Oma-je will be acclaimed French artist Laure Prouvost’s largest exhibition to date in North America. It celebrates her relationship to artistic predecessors including John Latham, Louise Bourgeois, Agnes Varda, and Niki de Saint Phalle, amongst others. The exhibition also transitions into more recent works that look to embodied ways of knowing for inspiration, shifting from Grandfather to Grandmother and forefather to foremother. Prouvost is known for her playful use of language, translation and transliteration, experimental narrated video, and immersive and surprising installations that transport visitors into unfamiliar worlds created largely from everyday objects.
Event/Exhibition meta autogenerated block.
When
June 30, 2023 – January 28, 2024
Where
Feature and Picasso galleries
Presented by
Frank & Ellen Remai Foundation and the Consulate General of France in Vancouver
The exhibition will include iconic pieces by Prouvost such as Grandma’s Dream (2013), End Is Her Story (2017), This Means (2019), Four For See Beauties (2022), and an immersive newly commissioned work titled Ohmmm age Oma je ohomma mama, to premiere simultaneously at Remai Modern, Saskatoon, and Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna in 2023.
The latest installation focuses on the figure of the grandmother as an ancestor and trailblazer. The work will transform the gallery into a theatre of object relating to memory, imagination, and inheritance. Visitors will be invited to travel through time and lose themselves in the dark, complex play between past and present, individual and society, and between modern and ancient concepts, relationships, materials and techniques. An important grandmother who offers inspiration for this new work includes the iconic 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf–and the dozens of other small limestone female figures created in a similar form and time period. Her journeys through space and time, passed from hand to hand, offered an intimate transfer of fertility, good fortune, spiritual symbols, or titillation. This powerful figure is amongst the earliest examples of symbolic representation and an important foremother to art as we know it.
Artist
Laure Prouvost was born in Lille, France (1978) and is currently based in Brussels. She received her BFA from Central St Martins, London in 2002 and studied towards her MFA at Goldsmiths College, London. She also took part in the LUX Associate Programme. Prouvost won the MaxMara Art Prize for Women in 2011 and was the recipient of the Turner Prize in 2013.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Above Front Tears Oui Float at the Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, Norway (2022); Laure Prouvost: Theatergarden and A Be(a)stiary of the Anthropocene, Longlati Foundation, Shanghai, China (2022); Deep Travel Ink, Atelier Hermès, Seoul, South Korea (2022); The Long Waited, Weighted, Gathering, Manchester Jewish Museum, Manchester, UK; Our elastic arm hold in tight through the claouds at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark (2021); Re-dit-en-un-in-learning CENTER at Lisson Gallery London (2020); Melting into one another ho hot chaud it heating dip, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, Portugal (2020); Deep See Blue Surrounding You / Vois Ce Bleu Profond Te Fondre, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France, LAM – Lille métropole, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France (2020), and Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands (2021); AM-BIG-YOU-US LEGSICON, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium (2019); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2018); BASS Museum, Miami, FL, USA (2018); They Are Waiting for You, Performance for stage at the McGuire Theatre, Minneapolis, MN, USA (2018); SALT Galata, Istanbul, Turkey (2017); Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland (2016); Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, Italy (2016); Museum Für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt Am Main, Frankfurt, Germany (2016); Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing, China (2016); Haus Der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2015); New Museum, New York, NY, USA (2014); Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City, Mexico (2014); Max Mara Art Prize for Women, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK and Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2013); Laure Prouvost / Adam Chodzko as part of Schwitters in Britain, Tate Britain, London, UK (2013); The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, UK (2012); and Flat Time House, London, UK. Prouvost represented France at the 58th International Art Biennial Venice, May-November 2019 and was included in NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020). June 2019 saw the artist’s first public commission in the UK through Transport for London’s Art on the Underground.
Exhibition Support
Remai Modern would like to acknowledge the contributions of the Frank & Ellen Remai Foundation and the Consulate General of France in Vancouver for supporting this exhibition.
