POSTPONED - Entretiens sur l'art with Natsuko Uchino
The encounter scheduled for October 1 has been postponed. A new date will be announced at a later date.
Entrusted since 2021 to critic and curator Jill Gasparina, the ‘Entretiens sur l'art’ (Interviews about Art) series, which for over 20 years has built up a formidable collection of artists' words, will from now on be looking closely at the materiality and conditions of emergence of the works of the guest artists.
From her alternative farm project in the Catskill Mountains north of New York, launched in 2008, to her recent research on micro-organisms, as well as her engagement with ceramics and her teaching in the MAGMA master’s program (Art in Geo-Materials at ESAD-Talm), Natsuko Uchino has developed a multidisciplinary practice that serves as a reflection on the ways matter is transformed. These “expanded craft practices,” as Nicolas Trembley has called them — which include sculpture, scenography, a wide range of collaborative projects, and occasionally curating — can also be understood through the lens of a return to the land.
The land refers to agricultural soils whose living dimension must be preserved. It is also the clay that the artist shapes and fires to produce ceramics, as in the long-term collaboration Keramikos with artist Matthew Lutz-Kinoy. Or the raw earth used in various construction techniques. Her work thus brings together “multiple issues, both concrete and conceptual, such as conviviality, ecology, craft, manual labor, but also questions related to our food, raw materials, and their sourcing” (Camille Azaïs). One should also add the critical perspective on art institutions, since “the land” also refers to those rural territories that are vibrant yet still largely marginalized within the current functioning of the industrialized, globalized, and urban art world.
