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ASHES FROM A BURNING LIFEAISHWARYA KUMAR2024-10-21
“A basic tenet of somatics holds true for better or for worse: we become what we practice and we’re always practising something" - Alta Starr
For the past year, as a researcher, I have been exploring the various articulations of the experience of an encounter. The encounter or in-in, contra-opposition to in Latin, exists in sharp contrast with its employment in contemporary artistic research, those that pay attention to the ecology of the experience of art and critique the divisive project of Modernity. And it is here, within this spiral of the before and beyond – of the experience of artistic practice as a series of ongoing intentional encounters – that I situate the year of knowing Diane Giraud. I met Giraud for the first time during her showing as a resident artist at Pada Studios in December 2023. Installed at the far end of the studio spaces, a visual piece – what then seemed to propel abstract expressionism – from her series Wonder (Esquisses) suspended from the ceiling first notified me of her presence. None of her works were wholly accessible if you kept your head straight and walked in the most visually accessible places. Neither was she. Since I was only just starting to play with the complexity of encounters, which for me was still an experience in the here and now, I failed to foresee that the following year of getting to know her and her work would retroactively alter the progression of time and space and take me back to moments before our meeting.
ON TECHNE Diane Giraud, of multicultural heritage, educated at the University of the Arts London in Fashion Design and Université Paris X Nanterre in Business Law, trained as a fashion designer under the mentorship of Savile Row tailors, having worked in the couture ateliers of designers like Alexander McQueen and consulted for various startup companies - is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist. Currently based in Lisbon, she has collaborated and showcased her work at Culturgest, the National Museum of Natural History and Science, PADA Studios, and the Roman Theatre Museum of Lisbon, supported by the Lisbon City Council, cultural advisor Dr. Catarina Vaz Pinto, the Portuguese Ministry of Culture, and the Gulbenkian Foundation. Giraud’s history with materials or the materiality of materials attests to the interdisciplinary quality of her work - invoking her understanding of technique and practice. She invites the audience into tactile, kinesthetic, and philosophical exploration with the work (paintings, installations, performances, situations), of the space they enter, the self, and experiences concerning the human condition. Self-admittedly, a precocious reader of a constellation of eclectic books from 20th-century sci-fi to French literature and parts of Balzac’s anthology La Comédie Humaine as a child, her relationship to existential dread, tragedy, and comedy of human existence, hints at the influence of 19th and 20th-century French philosophy in her works. At the same time, disclosing tactically, the cultural cacophony – French, Vietnamese, and Greek – that she is, her practice has remained loyal to the spaces in between – the questions concerning perspectives that resist dualisms. Needless to say, the task here is to combat against throwing Diane into the nebulous ‘global citizenship’ discourse or drawing fixed contours around her work. The task, a deceptively unassuming one, is to reveal how the preciseness of her skill ties together multitudes in a manner worth paying attention to. And so, I turn to questions concerning techne and the practice of making of this artist-artisan that evades the sharp objectivity assumed in forms. While listening to her speak, following her assortment of thoughts during the various times we’ve met at cafes, openings, or celebrations, or over the voice notes which by now I can assume begin with “Heyy Aishwarya…”, I notice a part of the iceberg that portrays a rigorous engagement with the inherent value of visual perception – one resisting the influence of linguistic dogmatism – which levitates around questions concerning reality. In consistently revisiting the themes but also the materials with which she thinks through the themes, not only is Giraud’s technique like that of a sculptor – a process of finding form forever at a horizon but also likens to the practice of philosophers for some of whom repetition is a discipline – a recursivity embedded with a difference. This movement towards a horizon, which in Diane’s case is a horizon of liminality, has led to creations and recreations that contemplate the latent and potential value of the materials and questions. Sitting at A Padaria Portuguesa in Graça on October 10th, I asked Diane to help me understand this process. Then I watched as she managed, with forensic attentiveness, to convey her intent and practice that operates by tapping into the interiority of the human condition - of processes, habits, concepts, and thoughts, so specific to humans – differently to the rest and particular to the self, that they transcend individual and culturally specific temporalities without suggesting superiority to other species – “We build complicated systems that separate us, but it’s the same old, same old”. Burning paper, revisiting themes, reshaping ideas, all of it seems to be the desire to shed these systems. As she showers me with a constellation of references from fashion, contemporary art, literature, independent cinema, and culture studies, I ask why, what emerges from these influences, is non-referential, Giraud exclaims “I’m not trying to hide, but neither do I want to format your way of thinking. I’m trying to build a relationship with you”. So let the artist talk to you, in a way they know how. Integral to the process of conversing is the notion of time, an element that is embodied in the theme and the manner in which Giraud choreographs the exhibition. As witnessed in the curatorial statement of the series A Private History: Fragments (2015-2016), showcased at The National Museum of Natural History and Science which is “a series of experimentations that led to the use of meticulous processes including taping and borrowing from the gold leaf laying technique to apply burnt papers and ashes piece by piece on the canvases”, time becomes a critical player in the making of the series. Beyond the obvious nature of time in the process, Giraud examines her relationship and identity at different moments in her life, which along with the materials she works with, is experimented with - “The artist chose to burn some books from her own collection including literary novels and anthologies, business law and political science essays as well as fashion magazines. Through trial, she developed an understanding of which texture, colour and size of fragments she wanted to achieve. In some of the canvases, remnants of the original pieces though barely recognisable pop out in fragments of wording or imagery. Never complete, they are left for the viewers to discover and wander in these unseen existences, juxtaposing metaphors of life and death in an attempt to demonstrate that everything is everything” (Giraud). Repetition. Training. Precision. Visual. Non-verbal. Revision. Reverie. The pieces of this series demonstrate everything I have said until now. So I turn to the presence of visuality interspersed with text. Giraud reiterates the long-standing presence of the material and materiality of books in her life – from childhood through her graduation in Law – which her artistic work seems to emulate a ritualistic turn away from. But rather than an emancipatory gesture of giving it all up, she plays with the very material of books, materiality of what it conveys, the grammatical discipline of correctness, and liberates herself from the weight of words. Not only has she burned some of her books in the process of making the material that would contribute to her visual works such as the one seen above, but the intention to leave behind traces of the books alludes to a desire of wanting to disclose what she has placed under the scanner – the assumed value of spoken languages, or rather what she is and has been moving towards - the inherent value of visual work. The process of burning the books brings together the reverie of the object(s) – of what it has been and what it could be – showcasing her experimental method of dealing with the relationship with both, thereby refusing the stability that both offer, if objectified. I attempt one more time, to understand her reason for interrogating the given value of words. Having been brought up in a universe made up of language, Giraud wonders about their capacity to mislead. Simultaneously, she muses about the weight that words accumulate over time, affording themselves a prescriptive value. Not wanting to pre-empt what the audience thinks about when encountering her art – she steers clear of referencing what they find to what informed its creation process. Seeking and inviting the audience to meditate over what she is saying, and expecting them to take a step further and continue the conversation. This extension on Giraud’s part to speak to the audience, but also as an expectation installed upon the spectators, reconciles with the experience I have had with her work for the past year. Of her work becoming a site of momentary encounters through which pass ideas, materials, spectators, and relationships, always between what was and what could be – of liminality.
ON PRAXIS One often thinks of liminality in relation to the practice of performing arts (also a form explored by Giraud), but to experience it in visual pieces, which have traditionally promised permanence (at least relatively) and lucidity, is a feat of Giraud’s, I am coming to appreciate over the past few months. Already with A Arte Da Conversação installed at the Fernando Santos Gallery in 2015 – a participatory installation with text instructions left to the discretion of the viewers to enter these curtained spaces and perform or ignore the action written on the floor in front of each curtained hub – Giraud began blending the experience of visual and performance art as interventions, where the encounter of her work with the audience would interrupt into the normality of gallery spaces, converting them from spectators to actors as they responded in real-time to the performance her work was choreographing - despite her absence. In 2018, Giraud co-founded In Limen with her brother Pierre Giraud to construct participatory experiences in site-specific contexts. Having picked up on the sense of isolation and disconnect already installed by the digital condition, one reaffirmed through forced isolation during COVID-19 in 2020, the spectre of the need to address connection and interaction drove the practice's creations. The series, designed as 5 long editions were imagined around MEMORY: Are we inheriting of our Ancestors’ personal histories?, DEATH: Why Sadness in the face of Death?, NORMALITY: Is there a healthy imperative into defining Normality?, INTIMACY: How the Society of the Digital irreversibly impacted genuine human interaction?, CONSCIOUSNESS: Will Artificial Intelligence defeat the notion of Humanity? Awarded and supported by Dra. Catarina Vaz Pinto, The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Lisbon City Hall, EGEAC, PADA Studios and the Ministry of Culture of Portugal, In Limen showcased their first edition work in 2019 - On Memory: Are We Inheriting Our Ancestor’ Personal Histories? at the Teatro Romano, Archeological site and Museum of Lisbon. Dating back to the 1st Century, having submerged, like more of Lisbon during the 1755 earthquake, and having excavated since the 1960’s, Teatro Romano seemed conducive to Giraud’s questions around memory - what is remembered, what one chooses to remember, and how one remembers. The show begins at the ticket line where the audience is handed an envelope only to be opened at a later stage of the experience. Thereon, Giraud extends the stage to the audience, inviting them onto it at the end of the act by the performers - intentionally shifting the role of the audience, who would otherwise be tourists to the site, into active ingredients of the conversation. Developing the practice of invitation and extensions further, Giraud went on to create This is Not a Magritte Performance Edition #1 at MONO, Lisboa (2020), This is Not a Magritte Performance Edition #2 at Pada Studios (2020), and This is Not a Magritte Performance Edition #3 at Culturgest (2023) which forms a part of a separate series LES ÉDITIONS COURTES. Designed as forty-five minutes to hour-long experiences (ART EXPERIENCES), the series is broken up similarly wherein the first act intends to open the guests emotionally through dance, art piece, or a visual installation, which is followed by the second act where Giraud and her works create meaningful conversations “enabled by playful protocol on a curated topic”. While these acts are not explicitly present in her visual works, Giraud sees her practice through In Limen and her installations such as A Private History: Fragments but also Splendid Stories of Disorder (II), 2015-2017 at Hub Criativo do Beato in 2017, and Fragments D’un Discours Poétique, 2015 showcased during a live salon at Underdogs Gallery in 2015, as generative catalysts for her desire to forge new ways of conversing:
When divisiveness seemingly prevails in society. We want to recreate a sense of belonging, In order to create that space,
On the 14th of October, I visited for the first time, Giraud’s studio. While picking up and placing down the various iterations of her work, simultaneously listening to her explain the reasons behind her trajectory, I realised the appropriateness of having scheduled this visit at the end of writing about her work. One hour into the visit, I turned to see her pace back and forth while talking about her recursive return to the human condition of the desire for freedom. Watching her watch the floor while she walked and talked displayed, for the first time, her reverie for the visual and experiential – the urge and desire to stay with perennially critical topics, which at times become topical. Reviewing her work through this gesture of pacing sheds some light on the need and role of art in conditions imbued with crisis of varying degrees. For Giraud, disconnection from the self and others, impacted by sophisticated designs of the digital, linguistic, and cultural, contribute largely towards individualisation rather than relationality. Her practice, which at first glance could be placed in visual arts, performing arts, social art, or otherwise, sits in fact, in the spaces in between. Referring to herself as "a painter without paint", her works invite the spectator into universes which are constructed with variables of human and more-than-human – as a way to do art that showcases a burning world while also forging new connections through the shared experience of the ember. Yet again, it seems that Giraud’s artistic practice – of foretelling and dealing with the aftermath of the encounter – one experienced on a global scale this time – seeks to sustain its effect for all those who were perhaps still struck by the first impact. Brutally infusing her work, is the practice of reverie concerning the way humans build relationships. It seems critical to return to this while finding some conclusions for this study of Giraud’s practice. Having stepped over what I find to be a highly boring, anthropocentric and positivist agenda found in metaphors of the rising phoenix, Giraud’s work, in fact, addresses the death she facilitates - that of words, isolation, certainty, and reality. Through a disciplined and detailed experimentation of materials, experiences, and concepts, her work could be read, over time, as an argument for meditative practices - showing, as she demands from the audience – to pay attention to practice that grounds the process of becoming.
Aishwarya Kumar
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Diane Giraud, portrait. © Pascal Montary
Diane Giraud
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Notes on the images captions
Images 10. and 11. Splendid Stories of Disorder: Soundscape “Time Does Not Exist” (29’19’’) produced in collaboration with Aurélien Rivière. Images 15. 16. and 17. This Is Not A Magritte Performance, Edition 2: Vocal Acoustic Performance with artists Mariana B. Camacho and Sara Rodrigues + Audience conversations. Images 18. and 20. This Is Not A Magritte Performance, Edition 3: With dancer/ choreographer Filipa Peraltinha. Soundscape produced in collaboration with Aurélien Rivière.
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