French pavilion at the Venice Biennale: Laure Prouvost's octopus

On May 11, 2019 will begin the 58th Venice International Art Biennial until November. To have selected this rather provocative videographer, with her immersive installations that make you think and her two-way stories, is "a daring choice", by the very admission of the president of the French Institute Pierre Buhler.

41 years old, short blond hair, sporty appearance, bursting with energy, Laure Prouvost who lives between London, Antwerp and Croatia and matches language with video, drawing, ceramics, tapestry, photography, has already beautiful international exhibitions to his name (Minneapolis, Miami, Los Angeles, Istanbul, Lucerne, Milan, Beijing, Munich, New York, Mexico).

Telling her adventure to AFP, she shows herself to be the fantasy embodied to the point that she seems to play in the story of her encounters, mixing the imaginary and the real.

She designed her project "like a big trip". "I chose the octopus because it deploys its brain in all its tentacles. The octopus wants to touch to understand. It thinks by feeling, it feels by thinking. Its big problem is that it has no memory", describes -she.

She made this preparatory trip with the curator of the French Pavilion, Martha Kirszenbaum, who stood out in Paris Photo in November by inaugurating the "Curiosa" sector which deals with the relationship to eroticism.

French "Outsiders"

They met those whom they define as French "outsiders", challenging the term "marginal". They exposed their unusual talents to the camera: Samantha and Garance the dancers, Jules the acrobat, Benoît the Burkinabé priest, Alexandre the karate teacher, Alma the flautist, Kader the magician who steals the tables, Nicolas the hip-hop dancer, Victor the retired teacher who makes the most fanciful headdresses.

Laure Prouvost also set out to make her roots speak: "my grandmother in Roubaix forced my hand to bring a tapestry she made in Venice!", She laughs.

They both started their journey in September with "Parisian concrete" at the Cité Pablo Picasso in Nanterre, then went to Grigny and Roubaix, before joining the ideal Palais du Facteur Cheval in Hauterives in the Drôme, and from there, tells Laure Prouvost, on horseback, the "world city" of Marseille.

"When we get out of our iphones, reality always exceeds fiction. There is a porosity between life and art. We filmed a woman who sang in the wind on a slag heap, shared a moment of grace at the edge of the Big Blue with the Burkinabé priest wearing a batman hat, "says the artist.

"With the tentacles, the octopus speaks of the ends, breaks the borders, will allow to enter all the lairs of the French pavilion", she promises.

How does she design the pavilion? She doesn't seem to want to foresee everything, letting herself be led by her inspiration. There will be the shapes of a large octopus and a film screened "in the belly of the octopus". Objects shown in the film will be found in reality. Passing musicians will intervene, there will be "sound layers".

"The main doors will no longer be the main ones. We want to rethink the pavilion. I want a pavilion open to the world, listening, who wants to chat with his neighbors," she said.

"The octopus is a marine animal, for a city, Venice, which is facades and behind the scenes. This project will be an adventure filled with surprises", observes Martha Kirzsenbaum.