Biography

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Winner of the 2018 Aware Prize Violaine Lochu performed, among others, at the Center Pompidou, the Palais de Tokyo, the Jeu de Paume, the Venice Performative Architecture Biennale and the MAXXI de l’Aquila (Italy), at the Playground festivals in Leuven (Belgium), Ars Poetica in Bratislava (Slovakia), at the Quadrum gallery in Lisbon (Portugal), at the Kunstverein in Munich (Germany), at the Contemporary Art Center in Geneva (Switzerland), at the Rickundgarden Museum (Sweden), at the Center in Cotonou (Benin)…

His work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions, notably at the Philharmonie (Musicanimale, 2022), at Bétonsalon (Un Tuning Together, 2023), MAC Lyon (Storytelling, 2019), MAC VAL (Tous de Sangs Mêlés, 2017), at Joliette Art Museum in Quebec (Dissolving your ear plugs, 2023), at the GAMU Gallery in Prague in the Czech Republic (Desire of changes, 2019)… The FRAC MECA Nouvelle Aquitaine in Bordeaux (Hòxó, 2023), La Villa Arson in Nice (Moving Things, 2020), the Pablo Picasso National Museum in Vallauris (Battle, 2021), Carpintarias de Sao Lazzao in Lisbon, Portugal (Twin islands, 2022), the French Institute of Cotonou in Benin (Hòxó, 2021) , the Analix Forever gallery in Geneva, Switzerland (MblaHa, 2022), the Dohyang Lee gallery in Paris (1987 and Hinterland)… hosted his solo or duo shows.

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Violaine Lochu’s work is an exploration of the voice as a vector of metamorphosis. His artistic practice extends between the fields of contemporary art, experimental music and sound poetry. Her projects begin with an immersion phase in a specific environment, in which she collects different sound, narrative and visual elements. From this material, she creates, through collage, recomposition, transposition, translation, reinvention, performances and installations where sounds, videos and drawings interact.

The fictional worlds that she invents unfold according to their own logic, and at the same time echo our contemporary world and the questions that concern it. From these questions, Violaine Lochu questions and subverts classic oppositions – dream/reality, true/false, feminine/masculine, science/magic… –, seeks to create new stories (Eden B4, HypnoQueen, Love Circle, Orpheus Collective, Modular K…)

The notions of connection, empowerment, collective and care are at the center of this work which has an important cathartic dimension (Battle, Hòxó, Meat Me). In recent years, many of his projects seek to politicize seemingly intimate issues; cancer (Crabe Chorus, C’est la peau, OrganOpera, Magnetic Song), childlessness (O Child), artistic crisis (MblaHa), mixed love (Xoxovi).

His approach is nourished by human encounters (babble of babies in Babel Babel, divinatory words of a fortune teller in Madame V., socio-professional jargon of the world of contemporary art in Animal Mimesis) or non-human (birdsong from Lapland in Hybird, underwater worlds in W Song, artificial intelligence in E.V.E, mineral world in Vestiges de Roncevaux…), readings (anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, science fiction, tales, mythology…), and multiple collaborations (musicians, choreographers, circus performers, visual artists, researchers in the human sciences, etc.). She has notably developed projects with musicians Julien Desprez (guitar), Méryll Ampe (electronics), Joëlle Léandre (double bass), Serge Teyssot-Gay (guitar)… but also with choreographers João Fiadeiro and Marcel Gbeffa, the poet Tomomi Adachi, sculptor Sara Bichão…