ART CITIES: Paris-Jeanne Vicerial

A resident of the Villa Medici program in Rome in 2020, Jeanne Vicerial, became, at not yet 30, the first French Phd Graduate in the practice of fashion design. Through her practice, she questions the mechanisms at work in the design of contemporary clothing and proposes an alternative to the Taylor-made/ready-to-wear dichotomy associated with fast-fashion culture.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Dimitris Lempesis

Jeanne Vicerial in “Armors” , her first solo exhibition in Paris, presents 15 new textile sculptures in various formats. Jeanne Vicerial has already garnered widespread recognition for her avant-garde approach, she used her research to overthrow textile industry codes, questioning the made-to-measure/ready-to-wear dichotomy. Her practice then shifted focus onto the place of women and the female body in society, regularly involving artists such as set designers, perfumers, and musicians in her projects. This new exhibition sees Jeanne Vicerial appropriating the space with her silent army of figures crystalised over time. An avid reader of poetry, she breathes life into these “Armors”, her disturbing warrior women clad in love (“amour”) as well as armour (“armure”), covering the mannequins entirely in black thread. At the heart of the exhibition an imposing articulated robot, controlled by a software program, dances around a sculpture, weaving a web to capture it with a succession of delicate, endlessly repeated movements. This creative process seems to have spawned various “presences”, recumbent women lying on their tombstones in a darkened basement that has become a crypt, mysterious hybrid figures, the very stuff of mythology. The pilgrimage moves to a different stage with a cabinet of curiosities dedicated to “sex-votos”. The artist covers the spotlessly white walls with an accumulation of objects-as-offerings. As she explains: “It’s interesting to note the parallels between the textile industry and the world of sculpture: both fields use the term ‘seams’ for the junction points, the places where parts interlink.” Mangled or dismembered, these flowering vulvas, tiny vestimentary organs and Venus bellies seem to look for their bearings. With these curious ceremonial objects, Jeanne Vicerial dives deeper into her exploration of the contemporary place of gender and the female body, turn in turn worshiped and abused over thousands of years.

Born in 1991, Jeanne Vicerial lives and works in Paris. Her passion for clothes design began when she was a teenager. After studying costume design then obtaining a master’s in clothes design at the Paris École des Arts Décoratifs in 2015, she started a research project which resulted in a Sciences, Arts, Creation and Research PhD in 2019. She took her research further by teaming up with the mechatronics department at MINES ParisTech to develop a patented robotised process for producing made-to-measure clothes with no waste. She also chose an artistic path which led her to work with Hussein Chalayan before founding research and design studio Clinique vestimentaire. In addition to producing her own creations, she has quickly established an array of partnerships with artists working in different fields. Her work has been widely shown, including at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2018), Villa Medici and Palazzo Farnese in Rome (2020) and Collection Lambert in Avignon (2021), and was recently included in the Centre National des Arts Plastiques collection in Paris as well as the FRAC Auvergne collection. 2021 saw the first major solo exhibition of her work, at Magasins Généraux in Pantin, near Paris.

Photo: Jeanne Vicerial, Armors, Installation view Galerie Templon-Paris, 2023, Artwork © Jeanne Vicerial, Photo: Dimitris Lempesis

Info: Galerie Templon, 28 rue du Grenier Saint-Lazare, Paris, France, Duration: 7/1-11/3/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10;00-19:00, www.templon.com/