ART CITIES: Paris-Bertille Bak

Bertille Bak’s work depicts communities in which she has previously immersed herself in an effort to understand their codes, customs, and rites. A humanist activist, Bertille Bak collects and archives the traces of these marginalized or “invisible” groups to create filmic stories. Although the works are imbued with a certain poetry, this in no way softens the harshness of the social conditions shown.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Jeu de Paume Archive

The exhibition “Out of Breath” brings together a selection of Bertille Bak’s installations which question the cartography of globalization through disappearing professions and expertise. Amongst these projects, are several new proposals created especially for the exhibition. Each work reveals a moving and sensitive dialogue vacillating between documentary, ethnographic research, and poetic fiction. The scenography, specifically designed by the artist, creates unexpected links between the works, thereby questioning and denouncing the North-South dependency with a certain element of fantasy and humour. The video “Tour de Babel“ (2014) retraces the various stages in the history of a cruise liner caught between two worlds: leisure and work. Here, Bertille Bak questions the movements of the different actors of these veritable floating cities: workers, decorators, tourists, the ship’s crew. She confronts the relationships of scale between the miniature, the real space, and disproportionate space. What emerges is a feeling of openness, grandeur, and yet restriction and confinement. This work reveals the rift between the impressive technical prowess of production on a mass scale and the overexploitation of the foreign workers upon whom such production relies. In “Les complaisants” ((Hair inlays, metal frames. Series of 35 pieces, 2014) on a residency for almost one year in the port of Saint-Nazaire, the artist asked each of the sailors she encountered to give her a lock of their hair. From this collection, she created a series of marquetry pieces, reactivating a practice once widespread amongst sailors, who in their free time during the long months of sea voyages, used their own hair as the raw material to create paintings. This project represents the flags of convenience that allow ships to be registered in a country other than that of their owner. As a result, many labour law abuses have emerged as shipowners are free to employ staff without being subject to local laws. Therefore, the artist reveals, using an element from the sailors themselves, what leads them to their own downfall: in this instance, situations of lawlessness, common in the maritime environment. For the project, “Boussa from the Netherlands” (Video 1 of 25 mins, Video 2 of 2 mins 28 secs, and a series of souvenir bottles, 2017) Bertille Bak worked with the shellers of small grey shrimp employed by a Dutch company in Tétouan, Northern Morocco, on the shores of the Mediterranean. In an effort to bear witness to the unacceptable working conditions imposed by multinational companies and an absurd economic and ecological modus operandi, Bertille Bak suggested to these women who work in the shadows, that they use the eyes of the small shrimp (the only element of the crustacean not used in the production chain) to fill the souvenir bottles prized by tourists. Traditionally, these are filled with sand. The resulting work, two videos produced during the artist’s stays in Morocco, as well as a series of souvenir bottles, allows a subtle denunciation of the situation, masked by the presence of an outdated pastime. The project “La Brigada” (Video of 12 mins and a series of shoeshine boxes, 2018-23) highlights a group of hooded shoeshine workers in La Paz, Bolivia. Faceless men and women, ghostly silhouettes, try to attract the attention of passers-by by tapping on small wooden boxes, looking for dirty shoes to be polished. Their work uniform translates all the contempt for this itinerant profession and the workers’ obligation to remain invisible. This video transforms the condition of these disdained workers into the respected guardians of the preservation of the shoe. Born in Arras in 1983, Bertille Bak lives and works in Paris. A major French artist on the contemporary art scene, she creates videos, installations, photographs, sculptures, and drawings housed in numerous French and foreign museums and private collections. She is known for her observation of local communities through which she feeds her imagination and line of thought. Far from descending into pathos, she uses her special relationship with these minorities, whom she frequently implicates in her projects, to show their daily struggle and resistance. From a traveller community in Ivry- sur-Seine, to Polish immigrants in New York, as well as the inhabitants of a Bangkok building doomed for destruction, or the rundown settlements and displaced mining populations of Northern France, she draws her inspiration from these populations to question the notion of “living together” and the excesses of contemporary society. In her projects, the artist aspires to create something common or shared, to imagine a new repertoire of collective actions on the fringes of ordinary protest. Rich in visual metaphors and allegories, her films are especially theatrical, fusing humour and derision, while being tinged with a melancholy sweetness. By placing the human condition at the centre of her concerns, they show us worlds in danger of disappearing, plunging the spectator into the daily life of these invisible societies.

Photo: Bertille Bak, La Brigada, 2018-2023, Video of 12 mins and a series of shoeshine boxes, © Bertille Bak, Courtesy the artist and Jeu de Paume

Info: Curator: Marta Ponsa, Jeu de Paume, 1 place de la Concorde, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, France, Duration: 13/2-12/5/2024, Days & Hours: Tue 11:00-21:00, Wed-Sun 11:00-19:00, https://jeudepaume.org/