Soazic Guezennec
Soazic Guezennec is a French artist born in Switzerland and now living and working between Berlin, Mumbai and Paris. She creates multimedia artworks that combine painting, video, installation and art in-situ to explore the relationship between the natural environment and cultural identities.
As a nomad and traveler, Guezennec researches some of the most exceptional locations on the planet. From the Amazonian rainforest to the Himalayan mountains and from African deserts to highly-urbanized megalopolises, she seeks to question the relationship between human beings and their environment.
Her research into these territories is transformed into immersive artworks which invite viewers to recognize their habitat and reconsider their own role in it. Guezennec’s work encourages the spect-ator to go beyond the act of mere representation and become a spect-actor.
“One consequence of having travelled the world is that I consider most things cultural and subjective. If I’m told things are a certain way, I will probably automatically think it could as well be otherwise, just like the “man without qualities” in Robert Musil’s book. I imagine how it could be, remember how it was, find references in other cultures or contexts, search other ways into my memories of travels, and combine them to build other possibilities.
In my practice this translates into an urge to transform the reality by painting on it. I’m painting on real estate catalogues, architecture books, sometimes even on the landscape itself, to add a touch of dream to reality, to re-enchant the world as it is, or sometimes to point at its absurdity. This could make me an idealist or utopian, but I believe that dreamers have the power to inspire new realities. What can only be seen as a fantasy by realistic people could very well become reality in the future.” - Soazic Guezennec
Universal to all of Soazic Guezennecc's art is the challenge to imagine what life would actually be like, if such visions were implemented, or such scenarios were happening. While optimistic, the work is certainly not naive but posseses an intrinsic sense of threat and danger, allowing for a simultaneous poetic and ironic humor concerning the utopian, the dystopian and the ever-present reading of political theatre.
https://www.soazicguezennec.com