Violaine Lochu

BATTLE is a "performed exhibition" by Violaine Lochu, designed to dialogue with Pablo Picasso's War and Peace. As its title indicates, it deals with the notion of combat: a battle directed against oneself or against the other, conflict experienced in one's flesh, in one's social or symbolic space. It consists of a video of a performance done in situ, an installation of objects and a sound piece to be listened to via a QR code.

Two women and two men embody this art of combat. Blue skinned, naked, eyes coated with kohl, dressed in a white skirt and wearing a crown, they perform a set of mysterious rituals from a distant future : words are captured, transcribed on paper, transformed into organic matter, ingested and then released through voice and song. 

These words were collected in Vallauris by Violaine Lochu, during the winter of 2021, from adults and children who agreed during one-on-one interviews with the artist, to confide their imagination and their experience of combat. The traumas of the Algerian war, the struggle against illness, mourning, family violence, uprooting and denigration constitute the raw material and the purpose of this artistic project, anchored in otherness and voluntarily transposed into the register of fiction. 

In the setting of the of old Romanesque chapel, the ceremonial conducted by the four warrior-healers seems to want to achieve a catharsis of these suppressed or unhealed sufferings. It also reminds of the primary and religious function of this place as a space of refuge and asylum.

This filmed performance also reactivates the allegorical dimension of Pablo Picasso's diptych War and Peace: a work of universal significance in which the Spanish master denounces the horrors of war and advocates for peace. 

For futher informations about the artist

Visuel : Violaine Lochu, Signal Mouvement, installation performée, production Les Ateliers Vortex, 2019. Photo © Cécilia Philippe.