Florence Lazar: You think the earth is a dead thing…

Florence Lazar (born 1966, Paris) worked primarily within the genre of photographic portraiture; by the end of the decade, however, she had begun to incorporate video into her practice. Her choice of a new medium coincided with her desire to respond, as an artist, to the on-going crisis in Yugoslavia. Family and social ties to the former Yugoslavia had seen her follow the crisis intensely since it had broken out a decade earlier.

The earliest work presented in the exhibition, Les Paysans (2000), is part of a cycle of documentary video and film works that chronicle attempts to establish individual and collective responsibility for the ensuing armed conflict. Since then documentary has remained at the forefront of her practice.