On the basis of observations of matriarchs and women in her own family, the artist develops a research on what (supposedly) links women to domestic spaces and care, questions the role of fabric in our human need for warmth and intimacy, and the place of domestic practices and textile crafts in contemporary art.
For her solo exhibition at the Grafische Werkplaats, Ariane Toussaint presents the various screen printing experiments on textile that she has been conducting at the workshop in the past months, including an artist’s book made of fabric and several textile patchworks. She creates site-specific textile installations that explore shifts in light and colour, using patchwork techniques as a metaphor for mending and building narratives.
Solo show at Grafische Werkplaats, on view by appointment until April 26th 2024. Project assistant: Garance Grillet-Aubert. Film: Jonathan Hielkema. Graphic Design: Zahari Dimitrov.
List of works available on request.
On the occasion of the opening of 'A Textile Room' at Grafische Werkplaats, Ariane Toussaint invited graphic designer Anna Moschioni to create an apron specially for the exhibition. Anna designed Due chiacchiere, a tender image of three Dutch women having a chat in traditional costume.
The apron is made of cotton and linnen and the edges are machine hemmed. The ties are made from left-over fabrics. Each apron is 50 x 50 cm. Edition of 10, each piece is unique.
On the occasion of the opening of 'A Textile Room' at Grafische Werkplaats, Ariane Toussaint invited graphic designer Clara Lezla to create an apron specially for the exhibition. Clara Lezla took inspiration in Greek mythology and the three Moirai sisters who weave the destiny of men.
The apron is made of cotton and polyester and the edges are machine hemmed. The ties are made from left-over fabrics. Each apron is 45 x 45 cm. Edition of 15, each piece is unique. Price: 30 €.
If you are interested in purchasing an apron, please contact arianejudithtoussaint@gmail.com
Following her residency at Bucharest AiR, the artist creates a series of screen prints on patchwork fabrics that borrow photographs from old sewing handbooks, to bring focus on these delicate and repetitive gestures. Printed on classical checkerboards that remind of domestic textiles, these seemingly effortless images with a rough grain create a contrast with the meticulousness of sewing. This site-specific curtain explore shifts in light and colour, using patchwork techniques as a metaphor for mending and building narratives.
Silkscreened patchwork curtain, wool and cotton, 224 x 263 cm (2023).
Project assistant: Garance Grillet-Aubert.
Taking tactility as a guiding principle, the exhibition explores gestures and practices that guide our bodies from the frenetic pace of urban life to the comforting and intimate space of our homes. How to propose a new and more positive approach to domesticity, better connected to urban spaces and our ways of working? How can our hands reflect hyperproductivity and its possible alienation forms, and reintroduce slow practices in our daily routines? The works on show propose spaces to rest and reflect on the movements (cleaning, watering plants, sewing, reading…) that accompany our daily lives, trying to reinsert space and time into a saturated urban rhythm; to confront and attempt to tame hyperactivity in which our collective unconscious is immersed, and develop an experience of the domestic realm.
Group show with works by Arthur Cordier, Valentino Russo, Gabrielle Stemmer and Ariane Toussaint. Curated by The Balcony in conversation with CAV Gallery (2024). Photography credits: Valentino Russo.
Taking tactility as a guiding principle, the group exhibition presents two new works of Ariane Toussaint, based on a research developed during a residency period at Bucharest AiR: How To Mend?, a textile curtain specifically suited for CAV’s architecture and A Textile Room, an artist book made of fabric. The exhibition explores gestures and practices that guide our bodies from the frenetic pace of urban life to the comforting and intimate space of our homes. How to propose a new and more positive approach to domesticity, better connected to urban spaces and our ways of working? How can our hands reflect hyperproductivity and its possible alienation forms, and reintroduce slow practices in our daily routines? The works on show propose spaces to rest and reflect on the movements (cleaning, watering plants, sewing, reading…) that accompany our daily lives, trying to reinsert space and time into a saturated urban rhythm; to confront and attempt to tame hyperactivity in which our collective unconscious is immersed, and develop an experience of the domestic realm.
Group show with works by Arthur Cordier, Valentino Russo, Gabrielle Stemmer and Ariane Toussaint. Curated by The Balcony in conversation with CAV Gallery (2023). Photography credits: Andrei Mateescu.
A feminist take on domestic crafts, in praise for tactility
The book gives shape to the visual essay ‘A Textile Room’ that explores the links between textile crafts, womanhood and domesticity, originally written during the artist-in-residency at Bucharest AiR with the support of the Mondriaan Fonds Kunstenaar Project.
Drawing on feminist readings and critical theory, the object transforms the practice of reading into a tactile experience. The text examines how folk garments and antique textiles convey narratives, the potential of hobby art to unleash creativity and define identity, and how to reinvent a new form of domesticity based on fertility rather than productivity. The practices of sewing and storytelling - putting things together, grasping fragments to create meaning - come together in a multi-layered object, at once dense and soft, reflecting in its manufacture the slow sewing practices that are its subject.
Silkscreened book, cotton, hand-bound
Edition of 5, 24 x 18 x 8 cm, 106 pages
Graphic Design by Zahari Dimitrov
Project assistant: Garance Grillet-Aubert
If you are interested in purchasing a book, please contact arianejudithtoussaint@gmail.com
(2023)
The work 'The Poetics of Space' comes together through researching childhood and learning processes and in particular in the combination of touching, seeing, and understanding in children's books. By following her explorations in tactility and her love of working with fabrics, Ariane Toussaint creates a gigantic book whose pages are in fact blankets. The book-bed is made of found fabrics that recall quilts and children's book illustrations; it is a sculptural and performative piece that calls for moments of tenderness and warmth. The work is part of a bigger research inspired by the eponymous book of Gaston Bachelard that explores home as a space for personal cosmology.
For the exhibition 'A Typo in the Book of the Self' Ariane Toussaint creates a site-specific patchwork inspired by traditional Bulgarian textiles. By being in dialogue with the textile book, the patchwork contributes to creating a space for the exploration of child-like tactility and comfort.
Installation view during 'A Typo in the Book of the Self', group exhibition with a.o. Harita Asumani, DAMO and Anna Haifisch, curators Yana Abrasheva and Vasil Vladimirov, at KO-OP / FIG. TREE, Sofia (BG) (2023). Project funded by Culture Moves Europe. Image credits: Veliko Balabanov / Ariane Toussaint.
Inspired by a souvenir flag commemorating a congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party, and traditional Bulgarian aprons, each of the four sides of the apron has a word in cyrillic, which translates as: art; childhood; books; together. The apron is made of cotton and linnen and the edges are machine hemmed. The ties are made from black and red braids, worked in knitting wool. Each apron is 50 x 50 cm.
A set of 19 aprons designed and silkscreened in collaboration with Zahari Dimitrov, on the occasion of the exhibition opening 'A Typo in the Book of the Self' at KO-OP, during the festival FIG. TREE, Sofia (BG) (2023).
For the first time since its establishment five years ago, the artist-run space and collective Trixie has come together to collaboratively develop a work. This action was translated by the collective into a “patchwork”; a patterned network of relationships that constitutes a coherent whole. In this, patchworking is a metaphor for building relationships across scales; of individuals, groups and institutions, of forming a stable whole from patterns of individual components; in essence a necessary precondition for working and living collectively.
'Residential Aliens' is a collectively produced artwork by members of Trixie, shown at U10 Art Space in Belgrade (RS) (2023). The exhibition was made possible through the kind support of Stroom Den Haag (NL). Image credits: Marijana Jankovic.
With this work the artist follows her explorations in tactility and her love to working with fabrics. The Poetics of Space is a gigantic book whose pages are in fact blankets. It invites adults, as well as children, to play, lay, sleep and dream. The book-bed is made of found fabrics that recall quilts and children book illustrations; it is a sculptural and performative piece that calls for moments of tenderness and warmth. The work is part of a bigger research inspired by the eponymous book of Gaston Bachelard that explores home as a space for a personal cosmology.
Installation view. Group show at Art Au Centre, Luik (Liège) (BE) (2022).
With this work the artist follows her explorations in tactility and her love to working with fabrics. The Poetics of Space is a gigantic book whose pages are in fact blankets. It invites adults, as well as children, to play, lay, sleep and dream. The book-bed is made of found fabrics that recall quilts and children book illustrations; it is a sculptural and performative piece that calls for moments of tenderness and warmth. The work is part of a bigger research inspired by the eponymous book of Gaston Bachelard that explores home as a space for a personal cosmology.
Installation view, solo show 'Filling the Void' at The Grey Space in the Middle, The Hague (NL) (2022).
At the outset, a man asks the artist to write, on his behalf, a letter to his absent sister. How can the photographic medium show the sister's absence? And the materiality of her evanescence? The work weaves a relationship to family taboo and trauma, which has no place in the past and remains a constant present. A work on the tactility of photographs and surface of fabrics is developed in an installation, that catches and obstructs light to suggest the unveiling of a secret, as well as in an eponymous publication that collects fragmented testimonies of the family.
Installation view at the Royal Academy of Art graduation exhibition, The Hague (NL, 2020). Photographs credits Ariane Toussaint & Ira Grünberger. Watch here a documentary about the work (Thomas Troadec/ Agence Catalpa).
Rooted in socio-medical research on hoarding disorder, an open door reveals a piece of the atypical interior of the artist's great-aunt, Claudine, where a horror vacui hides family secrets that have been carried through the generations. The project unfolds into a book and a performative installation consisting of textiles and a patchwork blanket, giving room for the artist to host public readings. “What I’m going to tell you is no fun. I’ll tell you about death, suffering, trauma and pain. But I will also tell you about love and human relationships—about the kind of love that I have for my aunt, for my whole family. I can’t help but yearn for physical touch, for warm hugs that are almost so suffocating, but somehow feel so good. There is love in my family, but it is not expressed.”
Reading at Cneai (National Centre for Contemporary Arts) during the exhibition 'The Walls', Paris, (FR, 2022).
Other readings of this book have been performed at the following spaces and events: Page Not Found, The Hague (NL, 2020), Unseen Fair, Amsterdam (NL, 2019), Manic Words—Off the Page, The Hague (NL, 2019), Forgetful Number presents: a series of contradictions, The Hague (NL, 2019).
Rooted in socio-medical research on hoarding disorder, an open door reveals a piece of the atypical interior of the artist's great-aunt, Claudine, where a horror vacui hides family secrets that have been carried through the generations. The project unfolds into a book and a performative installation consisting of textiles and a patchwork blanket, giving room for the artist to host public readings. “What I’m going to tell you is no fun. I’ll tell you about death, suffering, trauma and pain. But I will also tell you about love and human relationships—about the kind of love that I have for my aunt, for my whole family. I can’t help but yearn for physical touch, for warm hugs that are almost so suffocating, but somehow feel so good. There is love in my family, but it is not expressed.”
Rooted in socio-medical research on hoarding disorder, an open door reveals a piece of the atypical interior of the artist's great-aunt, Claudine, where a horror vacui hides family secrets that have been carried through the generations. The project 'The Big Tapestry Where We Come From. Chapter 2–Claudine' unfolds into a book and a performative installation consisting of textiles and a patchwork blanket, giving room for the artist to host public readings. “What I’m going to tell you is no fun. I’ll tell you about death, suffering, trauma and pain. But I will also tell you about love and human relationships—about the kind of love that I have for my aunt, for my whole family. I can’t help but yearn for physical touch, for warm hugs that are almost so suffocating, but somehow feel so good. There is love in my family, but it is not expressed.”
Performative reading at Page Not Found, during Hoogtij#60, The Hague, NL (2020).
My grandmother is aging, her mind sometimes blows away and she looks fearfully gone for a moment. The fear of losing her made me realize I only knew her through her family role and ignored her as a being. I digged into her collection of objects, fabrics and photographs, looking for patterns I could recognize and that would help me to feel and record her essence. She saw me growing up and gave to me her passion for fabrics and small details. The photographs are both a tribute to her and an autobiographical investigation questioning the weight of family and the border between life and death.
Installation view at Nest, The Hague (NL) (2017)