Laure Provoust

Language – in its broadest sense – permeates the video, sound, installation and performance work of French multi-media artist Laure Prouvost. Known for her immersive and mixed-media installations that combine film and installation in humorous and idiosyncratic ways, Prouvost’s work addresses miscommunication and things getting lost in translation. Playing with language as a tool for the imagination, Prouvost is interested in confounding linear narratives and expected associations among words, images and meaning. She combines existing and imagined personal memories with artistic and literary references to create complex film installations that twist fiction and reality. At once seductive and jarring, her unique approach to filmmaking employs layered storytelling, quick cuts, montage and wordplay and is composed of a rich, almost tactile assortment of pictures, sounds, spoken and written phrases. The films are most often nestled into carefully constructed environments filled with a dizzying assortment of found objects, from sculptures, painting and drawings to signs, furniture and architectural assemblages, that are connected to the overarching narrative yet act like relics.