Marie Ilse Bourlanges is a French artist based in Amsterdam, whose artistic practice combines tangible, performative and written matter, within collaborative and individual trajectories.
Prompted to reveal how personal emotions and intimacy can resonate collectively to repair social and ecological tears, Bourlanges’ work explores the borders between the personal and the public, the accepted and the excluded. Pairing sensitivity and boldness, she activates the narrative, conceptual and performative potential of materials to question power roles from dominant to vulnerable, and explore the paradox between transformation and its inherent loss.
Harvesting and gleaning natural resources are often her starting point to investigates how to translate the resilience of earth (Wetter than Wet), the erotic charge of clay (Farewell to my lover), and the embedded textual quality of textile (Stranded, Sans Réponse). Her recent project Mother’s Milk is a deep research into transmission of trauma and embodied memory, working in close-relationship with a mental health-care institution and archives of marginalized groups. Looking further into underrepresented voices, she dedicated her artistic research fellowship at the Rietveld Academie – Pollinating Agents / Resilient Beings – to investigate and learn from other- and inter-species forms of communication and collaboration, in dialogue with her own struggle into motherhood. She is currently initiating a long-term investigation connecting textile mythologies and hidden narratives with social constructs of female sexuality, entitled Je File un Fil pour ma Fille (I Spin a Thread for my Daughter).
In 2019 Bourlanges was awarded the “Proven talent” grant from the Mondriaan Funds (NL) and the artistic research fellowship of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. In 2020 she takes part in the parallel program of Manifesta 13 in Marseille with a dual exhibition entitled Displace at 3bisF Contemporary art centre in Aix-en-Provence (FR).
Whether collective or individual, Bourlanges’ work has been exhibited among others in Looiersgracht 60 (NL), Arti & Amicitiae (NL), Kunsthalle Lottozero (IT), Korean Ceramic Biennale (KR) and Forma Art gallery (CH). In conjunction with her artistic practice, she teaches at the Royal Academy of Arts of The Hague (NL).
– contact +31 6 31950909 info@marieilsebourlanges.com