Laure Prouvost

For the 2024 exhibition IN THE MIST OF IT ALL, ABOVE FRONT TEARS, Laure Prouvost created numerous videos, performances and room-filling installations in which sculptures, textile wall hangings, paintings and collages merge seamlessly into one another. To step inside one of her installations is to enter a dreamlike environment of muted light, glass that seems to melt, embroidered texts, everyday objects, images of water, mist and swaying greenery. Voices and texts on screens address the viewer directly. 

Prouvost is fascinated by language, and especially by miscommunications such as those resulting from translation. She grew up in northern France, studied at Goldsmiths College in London and lives and works in Brussels. She is constantly switching back and forth between French, Dutch and English, finding room for new associations in the liminal space between languages (see Re-dit-en-un-in-learning, CENTER).

Prouvost seeks out boundaries – between countries and languages, or between people, plants and animals – specifically in order to blur them. Recurring motifs include water and all kinds of liquids (see Drinking One Another Fountain), along with eggs, breasts and tentacles. In her installations, these elements expand and take the form of creatures that defy classification. Ecology and the female body as the source of life are recurring subjects in her work as well. But there are no wagging fingers here: she addresses her chosen themes subtly, with humour and a mildly absurdist sensibility.

In 2014, she rewrote her own family history with a narrative about a fictional set of grandparents (see Maquette for Grand Dad’s Visitor Center). In this version, her grandfather was a conceptual artist who dug a tunnel to Africa and disappeared. His wife, Grand Ma, then went on to become a main character in Prouvost’s oeuvre (see Every Sunday, Grand Ma).