Edouard Glissant writes The first darkness came from being torn away from the everyday country, from the patron gods, from the tutelary community, and in this sense Gaëlle Choisne’s thaumaturgic touch serves to re-establish an order, to heal a wound, to reconstitute the broken balance between us and the planet. Born in the north of France, of a Haitian mother and a Breton father, her autobiography bears the indelible marks of colonialism that remain in certain aspects of her artistic production and that see Haiti as a microcosm generating energetic reflections in the rest of the world. Her modus operandi starts from a physical and spiritual relationship with materials and the use of various media: from sculpture, to videos made from found footage, to installations that build an abacus of linguistic hybridities in the complexity of a culture that combines vernacular elements with those of globalization.

A curious traveller, she builds, with objects found by chance, useful tools for the creation of contexts poised between the awe of the miraculous and the terror of the sublime; her work is interspersed with collections of found objects, some of which have been preserved for many years as talismans, amulets, playing cards, or fetishes that take on curative functions. These collections also convey the artist’s interest in esotericism and spirituality.

The exhibition, curated by Massimiliano Scuderi, is built from groups of new works, the result of a new creative experimentation, made with a total heterogeneity of materials: from cement, to cardboard, to metals, to flowers such as the helicrisium, commonly called immortal flower in French-speaking countries. This metaphor urges us to understand the relationship between us and the soul of the world through an inexhaustible energy to which we all, in various ways, contribute. The path built inside the A SUD gallery constitutes an unrepeatable, spiritual, and multi-sensory experience.

Gaelle Choisne is recognised by international critics as one of the most interesting artists of the moment, and for this reason she will open, in an exhibition together with the American Lorna Simpson, one of the most important art events in the world, namely Paris + for Art Basel 2023.

The opening of the exhibition, promoted by the Fondazione Zimei, is scheduled for 9 September at 6 p.m. at the A SUD gallery and will be open by appointment until 30 December 2023.

Gaëlle Choisne

Lives and works in Paris, also collaborates with various public and private institutions in Haiti, where she is involved in and supports numerous alternative, collective and extra-cultural projects.

Solo exhibitions include Temple of Love – to Hide, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Defixion, commissioned by Nicolas Bourriaud for the archaeological site of Lattara – Museum Henri Prades and MO.CO. Panacee, Montpellier, FR; Ceremony (Burial of an Undead World), curated by Anselm Franke, Elisa Giuliano, Denise Ryner, Claire Tancons and Zairong Xiang, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, DE and at the Museum of Modern Art, Paris. He has also exhibited at the New Museum in New York, Centre Pompidou and Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Pera Museum in Istanbul, Fondation Pernod Ricard in Paris among others.

She has also participated in the 12th Havana Biennial, the 13th and 15th Lyon Biennials, the 13th Sharjah Biennial, the Gotenborg Biennial (2021), the 14th Curitiba International Biennial (BR)