France 2019

Title: “Deep See Blu Surrounding You”
Artist: Laure Prouvost
Curator: Martha Kirszenbaum
Commissioner: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication

Laure Prouvost’s project for the French Pavilion is structured around three main themes that provide reference points for the exhibition’s development. First of all, there is a reflection surrounding concepts of generations and identities, what links or distances us from each other: the eldest from the youngest, the neighbour from the stranger. Next comes the idea of disconnection, incomprehension and discrepancy, namely by means of an exploration of language and its appropriation, or misappropriation. Finally, tinged with utopia and surrealism, Laure Prouvost’s project is committed to representing an escapist journey, both tangible and imaginary, towards an ideal elsewhere. The exhibition takes the form of an invitation to melt into a liquid and tentacular universe amongst the different unveiled and shared realities, which intermingle here. The project challenges the idea of the representation of a fluid and globalised world, made of exchanges, connectivity and discrepancies. In the continuation of her artistic practice, which intertwines representations of desire, oneirism, and a fantasised description of nature, Laure Prouvost particularly focuses on language, word-play and translation. The attention given to her environment and to the natural and human elements that surround her calls to mind the immersive quality of her films, installations, objects, drawings and tapestries.
The corner-stone of Laure Prouvost’s artistic project for the French Pavilion is
a fictional film. It takes the form of an initiatory journey, a joyous saga filmed over the course of a road trip through France – from the Parisian suburbs to the north of France, from the Palais du Facteur Cheval to the Mediterranean Sea – and finally to Venice. The film, which is full of dialogue and idioms, is based on a script co-written by the artist and various contributors, in French and English with some ltalian, Arabic or Dutch passages. The dialogues are performed by a dozen of characters of different ages and backgrounds, with specific performance skills: magie, dance, music, etc.