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© Mireille Vautier |
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| The ubiquitous, environmentally persistent but psychologically transient, almost definitively utilitarian plastic bag provides both the support and context for a new series of emotionally charged embroideries by French artist Mireille Vautier Built on a substrate that is synonymous with transitory modern life, Vautier creates complex shapes and patterns that evoke both the intricacies of the body and the fragility of the vessel. Recognizable and unrecognizable organs and features emerge, wondrous networks are evoked, yet the whole enterprise seems built on a membranous wisp, it could all so simply just blow away. Mireille Vautier’s embroidery and imagery are decidedly feminine. The mere act of embroidering, the almost infinite patience needed to move the thread just a small distance, then to move it again and again evokes countless hours in the lives of generations of women. Vautier spends her hours with mostly deep red threads, and the imagery that emerges is often of blood and childbirth and life. She writes “The human body is my main source of inspiration. Its inside and outside, its wounds and its vivid memory; skeleton, organs, ex-votos, precious jewelry protected by the skin....The human body is a relic, a base for work dealing with memory.” Mireille Vautier graduated from the ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1986 and has exhibited works on paper, glass as well as her embroideries in numerous exhibitions across France. An essay about her embroidery work by Dominique Vochelle will appear in the review Etoiles D’Encre in March. “Embroidered” will be the artist’s first one-person exhibition in the United States. The exhibition will run from February 14th through March 23rd at Safe-T-Gallery in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn and will open with a reception for the artist on Valentine’s day February 14th, from 6 to 8 PM. |
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