Opening on September 14, 5-8pm

Faire, défaire, reconstruire 

Disperser, rassembler, découdre, éclater 

Ne jamais ériger trop en hauteur car ça tombera c’est sûr 

Je me confonds aux lignes qui se dessinent au fil bleu

Ma peau devient aiguille, l’aiguille me devient peau 

Mes muscles deviennent ligne 

Et alors

Recherches, trouvailles et muscles tressent une valse à trois temps

D’infinies topographies surgissent lorsque je confronte des contraires avec mes mains

Lorsque je les frotte l'un contre l’autre et qu’une étincelle en naît 

me forcent à réfléchir autrement même si j’en ai mal jusqu’au sang

mal jusqu’au tout dernier grain de sable 

Un nouveau lieu où l’on peut 

peut-être

construire à nouveau 

construire en étendues 

Ne jamais ériger trop en hauteur car ça tombera c’est sûr 

Tracer avec tous mes corps les contours d’une ligne qui ne se fermera jamais

Je m’acharne à garnir d’opacités ces transparences

Brodées, projetées, criées, dessinées, emprisonnées 

Opacités lumineuses 

Opacités qui ouvrent à des lieux infinis d’échanges 

Cellules, organes, vallées et fourmis

Tous conservent  la promesse 

D’un monde aux soi-collectifs, aux corps-territoires, aux lieux débordés

Aux milles épaisseurs et aux milles étendues 

Je m’empresse d’en faire la carte 

Peut-être que la carte à son tour nous fera

      autogéographies presents the culmination of a research-creation project of porous borders. Taking form through a multitude of gestures, stories, and materialities Tania Lara’s immersive installation invites us to discover autogeography; a counter-cartographic practice that plays across scales to schematize the sites - or lieux - that surround and constitute us. By recognizing the intimate relationship between all these sites and all these bodies carefully woven together, whether by hand or by machine, autogeography also becomes a method and an epistemological path that propels collective practices of meaning-making, always situated and always embodied.

Here, Tania lends herself to the game by unfolding  her own autogeography; a map of thousand maps where the anatomical body, the social body and the geographical body intertwine, crying out an overflow of identities with no right or wrong side, nor beginning or end. A map where the self is always collective and the collective is always geographic. A map that relentlessly attempts to resist hegemonic ideals or universals (identities, territories, and other carcasses) by refusing to build new truths to which to adhere in order to define oneself. This practice reverses conventional cartographic tools that render so obvious the acts of conquering, occupying and defining. Instead of encircling and enclosing, it makes each element slide and bounce, plunging them into a non-linear relationship that could only be appreciated through the wavering of a play of scales, setting space and time ablaze.

Pulling from the notions of autohistoria teoria and the "right to opacity", from Gloria Anzaldua and Édouard Glissant respectively, this method weaves an imaginary that realizes – meaning that it both makes visible as well as executes – the opaque multiplicity of its constitution. In this sense, all the elements, diagrams and scenes found within an autogeography have no other role than that of a fragment, since their coming together does not serve a single, coherent purpose. What is developed is a series of superimpositions that unfolds in the form of an invitation, frenetically projecting all kinds of encounters that blend their own presence and their own opacity through one another.

In parallel of the exhibition, an embroidery workshop will be held by the artist Tania Lara on October 14, 2023. Click here for more informations.

Tania Lara is a multidisciplinary artist, textile artisan and counter-cartographer. Her work questions the metaphysics of space - the way it is conceived, perceived, played and takes form - exhumes the weaved and unraveled relationships between the different bodies that inhabit it. Deeply rooted in a collaborative approach, Tania's work is based on the relationships of simultaneity that constitute reality to make space burst into multiplicities. If her work tackles a reflection on spatiality, space is never admitted as an implicit data. Rather, this space derives from elements that spark, such as dreams, stories, places and relationships.