PRESENTATION: Laure Prouvost-In The Mist Of It All Above Front Tears

Laure Prouvost is an artist who makes complex installations involving video works characterised by layered stories, surreal humour and wordplay. The artist’s concern is with penetration of unknown worlds, escape from everyday life, and the conscious loss of the self in the hope of ultimately finding one’s way back to it again.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: De Pont Museum Archive

Laure Prouvost presents a compelling and immersive exhibition in which the artist plunges visitors into her surreal, absurdist and poetic universe. “In The Mist Of It All, Above Front Tears” connects social engagement and the limitless power of imagination through video, sculpture, performance, textile and text. In an entirely unique manner, Prouvost conveys a hopeful and liberating message concerning themes such as ecology, the female body and migration. Prouvost’s installation transform the galleries, wool-storage rooms and main hall of De Pont Museum. In this exhibition, visitors make their way through a dark space, weaving between the heavy oil pipes that stick up out of the ground and ooze viscous brown liquid into reflective puddles. A worm-like creature slithers up one of the pipes. For a moment, all hope seems lost. Or are these the signs of a new beginning? Rather than providing clear answers, Prouvost takes you on a journey through the world of ‘Grandma’, one of the recurring characters in the artist’s oeuvre. In a monumental video installation several metres high, Grandma is given wings and her dream of being able to fly becomes a reality. De Pont’s intimate wool-storage rooms provide space for a number of videos in which Prouvost triggers all the senses: you can practically smell the images. Via the body of a gigantic bird, you find yourself in a magical world where the ceiling opens to reveal a large cloud. For a moment, you yourself seem to be soaring through the skies. In that limitless space, birds can circle endlessly on the wing while fish spit water into each other’s mouths in an infinite cycle. Yet this cloud is actually collapsing and the consecutive spaces have a wide range of glittering rubbish floating around in them. The enchantment becomes not only alluring but frightening as well. Every time you think you have a firm grasp on the world around you, Prouvost shifts reality. One minute you are in a wicker basket in the exhibition space, and the next, she will have catapulted you into the lush courtyard garden at De Pont. Nymph-like women dance around you, approaching one at a time to whisper verses of poetry in your ear. Humorous and serious, dark and light, fiction and reality: in Prouvost’s artistic universe filled with contrasts, she confronts the visitor with the consequences of global warming and the migration of people and birds – while at the same time, inviting us to float freely above the clouds and shatter the boundaries that limit us. The expansion of consciousness is a common thread running through Prouvost’s oeuvre. For her, language is an essential means for achieving this. Prouvost views language as a calcified system that all too often falls short as a way for us to define and convey our perceptions and emotions. As a French citizen who studied in England and now lives in Brussels, she is also fascinated by the confusion that can emerge when one language is translated into another. For instance: the ‘tears’ of FRONT TEARS can be interpreted as either rips (as in clothing) or the tears you cry. And FRONT TEARS, when spoken aloud, sounds like ‘frontiers’ as well.

Photo: Laure Prouvost, Klaus, 2022, Photo: Antoine van Kaam, © Laure Prouvost, Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery

Info: De Pont Museum, Wilhelminapark 1, Tilburg, The Netherlands,  Duration: 24/2-18/8/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-17:00, https://depont.nl/