Fragility at the Core: An Interview with Théo Mercier
Théo Mercier
Théo Mercier (Paris, 1984) is a sculptor and stage director working between Paris and Marseille. An artist, explorer and collector, he incorporates pre-existing objects into his works, juxtaposing them with his sculptures to create theatrical environments, visual choreographies immersing the viewer in an archaeology of the future, where strangeness, poetry, and humour converge.
Trained in Industrial Design, he worked with Bernhard Willhelm and Matthew Barney, developing a multidisciplinary practice spanning sculpture, performance, theatre and installation. Awarded the Silver Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale of Dance, he staged productions such as Radio Vinci Park (2016), La fille du collectionneur (2017), Outremonde (2021–ongoing) and Skinless (2024). His recent solo exhibitions include I Swallow Your Tears (mor charpentier, Paris, 2025), Mirrorscape (MONA, Tasmania, 2025), and Bad Timing (Villa Medici, Rome, 2023).
Mara Sartore – Your production moves between the “white cube” and the “black box”, the gallery and the theater, the visual art and the stage. These two practices engage space and audience in very different ways. How do you experience this transition from one to the other, and how do they dialogue?
Théo Mercier – Over the last decade, I’ve discovered that the audience has become the center of my work – both in the sculptural and the performative environment. Everything is coming from and out of the audience. I’m fascinated by the distance of the gaze: how we look at something, how long we look at a painting, at a sculpture, at a performance. How do we focus – are we silent, are we speaking with someone, are we on our phone or not? All these rituals of looking at the world really interest me, because the way we’re looking at things has a political aspect as well. For about ten years now I’ve been playing with these ways of seeing, these rituals of watching. It’s very different to be in the dark, seated in rows together, versus being in a white-lit space where you move around an object. I’ve been questioning what it means to be together looking at the same thing, or together but each looking at something different. Is the object moving around you, or are you moving around it? Part of my work is to play with, to mess with these dynamics and to try and find new ways of looking at the world and of producing work. Searching for those magical times we dedicate to art, moments disconnected from ordinary time. I’m not searching for answers so much as doing research through practice, experimenting with those habits of seeing and being.
I try to bring the concept of object in the body and to put life to stillness. It’s about bringing movement where there is stillness, and somehow playing with the usual dynamics.
MS – And in terms of practice itself, performances can often be a collective work, whereas sculpture is often thought of as a solitary act. Yet even in your sculptural projects, such as the one in Tasmania, where you worked with processes of decomposing, recomposing, and assemblage of objects, you have been working in a team. Would you say one practice is more solitary and the other more collaborative?
TM – At this point, everything I do is kind of collective. Even my sculpture work depends on the talents of other people. And I’ve been lucky in recent years to be surrounded by really talented artists. I have been surrounded by really great sand sculpture artists, music composers, dancers, 3D designers. My role is that of the chef d’orchestre, the conductor, organising all the talents around me. And this has changed a lot: I used to make all my sculptures alone, but now I bring together a circle of collaborators, a kind of micro-society around each work – it makes the work more grounded to the world, which I’m really grateful for. So for me there is not such a big gap between sculpture and performance – in fact, they’re merging more and more.
MS – Looking at your work, I notice a recurring leitmotif: the reused objects and ready-made images, the assembling of different fragments of existing things. This often brings with a mood of ruin, collapse, even a certain apocalyptic tone. Do you think this material part of your practice connects with the conceptual one, both in sculptural and performative work?
TM – I think fragility is at the core of everything I do – fragility and this place in-between what is here and what is not here anymore. There is always this sense of vulnerability: of the bodies, of society, of architecture. Everything is here or kind of still standing, but on the verge of collapse. And it’s the same with the types of bodies I work with in my performances, everything is standing on a thin line. As for materials, I often use ready-made and existing images. I don’t believe there is a need to “invent” really anything anymore – rather, to look differently at what already exists. We have already produced so much: objects, histories, cultural treasures, disasters. I’m from a generation where everything is getting faster and faster and, for me, it’s about stepping back and looking at what we have. And that is a both political and ecological aspect of the work. I have always been drawn to big gestures, but at the same time I try to keep production small. Because when you look closely at what I actually use, I’m working with really little.
MS – If you had to highlight a specific project in your career that marked a shift, a turning point in your practice, which would it be? At the beginning of your career you used to work alone, and now your process is very different. Was there a moment that represented this change?
TM – There are several. I began as a sculptor almost 20 years ago, very young, already showing my work in public. At first, it was extremely pop: plastic materials, super colorful – riots of colors. I explored that for a few years. And it was very much sculpture, working with whatever forms I could create using polyester, resin, and other synthetic materials. But then I became almost “allergic” to my work. I left France and moved to Mexico, where I discovered ceramic and wood carving. Through those materials, my practice completely changed. And it was also there, about ten years ago, that I created my first performance. That experience completely changed my relationship to sculpture. The body of the viewer occupied a central place, and my understanding of space was completely altered. My focus shifted from the object alone to the entire space, the audience’s position, the light, the circulation.
MS – And which was the first project that, in your vision, really embodied this duality?
TM – “Outremonde” at Collection Lambert, five years ago. It took me 15 years of trying different things to understand where I’m supposed to be, what to search and to be focused on. Now I see my specificity in this place in-between, in working on that border zone – inventing or searching for new types of space, new relationships between objects and audience, and new ways of producing work. And production itself is a really important part of the work: as a producer, I’m taking really big responsibility on how I’m making things, how I’m paying people, how I’m traveling, how I’m storing my work. The backstage is as important as what the audience sees. For the past ten years, with Céline, my studio manager, we have been shaping the studio and company itself as an artistic project – not just a place of production, but an extension of the artistic work.
MS – What are you working on now and what are your upcoming projects?
TM – We’re preparing a new tour of Radio Vinci Park, presented with the Festival d’Automne in Paris this October, in a secret central location, running from the 17th to the 21st, just before Art Basel Paris. Then there is the Diriyah Biennale Foundation in January 2026, as well as a commission for the Foundation Carmignac, a large site-specific installation in the public space for Le Voyage à Nantes in the Summer, and a solo show at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City in the following November.
MS – As a final question, I’d like to ask about your relationship with Paris: what does living here mean for you, and how does the city inspire you? And could you share a couple of favorite places you would recommend to someone visiting?
TM – I was born and raised in central Paris. It’s a city I love and hate – like home, it’s full of contradictions. It’s a beautiful city, but also catastrophic in terms of poverty and inequality. Personally, I’m lucky, because I live in very good conditions, but overall I think it has become a difficult place to live: increasingly bourgeois, less mixed than it used to be. It’s a pity.
Still, Paris always has a certain charm: under the rain or under the sun, there is always something a bit magical happening. It’s a dense, complex city, full of life and movement. I’m as interested in what happens in a metro station as in the beauty of its historic districts. That density of life everywhere, non-stop, is what gives me energy. I’m very much a city boy, and I really like that constant movement. As for places I love, I often go to the flea market in Saint-Ouen, and it’s a really inspiring place for me. I also enjoy going to the zoo, and the cemeteries of Montmartre and Père Lachaise – they are my favorite parks.
