The titles of Célie Falières’ pieces borrow from natural sciences, literature, popular culture, archaeology, mythology and geography. However, what makes her work so singular is the precise attention she pays to materials, whether poor or noble, and to their transformations, their uses, the way in which they are extracted…
The artist collects raw materials — mineral, vegetal, animal, acoustic and visual — and contextualises them, archives them and explores the crafts they are linked to. “To know is not to see […] but to act”٭. In the spirit of pragmatism, she welcomes the experience of letting things surprise her. Not knowing invites experimentation.
Whether she is sharing her enthusiastic practice of ceramics with a baker, pushing the limits of glass blowing beyond usefulness, or deconstructing the codes of leatherworking, Célie Falières seeks out the porosity between learning processes, practices, objects and their uses. She accepts and is comfortable with the shortcomings and vacant spaces that are needed to move between projects. Armed with a playful awareness of the ambiguity that exists between art and craftsmanship, she collects the fragments of a body of work that she weaves together with each learnt — and always questioned — gesture. As such, she has made the phrase “To do is to think” hers. Objects, while they have an existence of their own, beautiful and/or useful, are further enhanced during her performances. Danced or acted out, they become new rituals in the service of the creation of a story and a language, in which the memory of a landscape (of its resources) and the presence of a body are indispensable arcana.

Martine Michard, February 2024

٭John Dewey, Art as Experience, New York, 1934

Translated by Lucy Pons, 2024

Artists, writers, philosophers, authors

Virginia Woolf, Ana Mendieta, Tacita Dean, Simon Starling, Valentine Schlegel, Monique Wittig, Mike Bourscheid, Tim Ingold, Gina Pane, Mike Kelley, Jean Giono, Georgia O’Keeffe

Materials

Clay, cotton, linen, silk, wood, stone, plaster, enamel, glass, osier, wool, beeswax, straw, slides

Tools

Kilns, saws, shovels, paintbrushes, chisels, knifes, needles, wool picker

Gestures

Burn, coat, model, fire, soak, dye, gather, scratch, sew, melt, assembly, cut, dig, weave

Key words

Idiolect, material culture, épanorthosis

Titles

L’opoponax, Monique Wittig, 1964, Les éditions de minuits
Hippo Lite, Drinks, 2018, Drag City
Les Combarelles, Michel Jullien, 2017, L’écarquillé
The kindred of the Kibbo Kift, Annebella Pollen, 2015, Donlon Books
Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, Tim Ingold, Routledge, London, UK, 2012

Quotation

“I think that interest in collecting is less about the object substance than holding one self in a perpetuous state of waiting and looking.” Tacita Dean on BBC
“Correspondre avec le monde, ce n’est pas le décrire ou le représenter, mais c’est lui répondre. Grâce au travail de médiation de la traduction, correspondre c’est fusionner les mouvements de sa propre conscience sensible avec les flux et les courants de la vie animée.” Tim Ingold, Faire anthropologie, archéologie, art et architecture, p. 227, 2012, Éditions Dehors
“It is truly no feat to crack a nut, and therefore no one would think to gather an audience for the purpose of entertaining them with nutcracking. But if he should do so, and if he should succeed in his aim, then it cannot be a matter of mere nutcracking. Or alternatively, it is a matter of nutcracking, but as it turns out we have overlooked the art of nutcracking because we were so proficient at it that it is this new nutcracker who is the first to demonstrate what it actually entails, whereby it could be even more effective if he were less expert in nutcracking than the majority of us” Franz Kafka, Joséphine the Singer.
“On a réussi à créer un état d’âme avec des pierres assemblées dans un certain ordre.” Jean Giono, Les Pierres, p. 68