Mattress foam, cardboard, plastic tarpaulins or pipe fittings are assembled, painted in glacial tones or covered in spray-paint, among other things. The list of some of the materials used by Ella C Bernard reveals the logic behind the assembly of her installations, which are often fragile or unstable and composed like architectural elements, rendering urban or domestic contexts autonomous.

Ella C Bernard is an artist who practises sculpture, moving images and textual forms. Her installations tie or tape together, assemble and twist objects that are collected or recycled, to which ceramic, metal or concrete elements are sometimes added. Rather than a simple aesthetic of recuperation, her work expresses a desire to reappropriate spaces. Usually relegated to the invisible, industrial offcuts and consumer products that have been abandoned, rejected or designed to become obsolete reveal some of the hidden or marginalised systems that nevertheless actively contribute to the organisation of networks (electrical, waterworks or telecommunications) that underpin our contemporary society.

In Ella C Bernard’s artworks, the elements, which become sculptural, evoke the effort necessary to illuminate, transport, protect from bad weather or allow water to flow – all manner of everyday movements that we take for granted, but that actually require constant attention, care and repair. These movements can be compared with the collective, social or political dynamics used to fight inequalities: their role within a network enables them to act, circulate and exist. The artist’s sculptural networks thus explore the limits of these activities and the counterintuitive dimension of the materiality of each link in the chain: metal encounters textile, and plastic canvas is combined with other textures. The details guide the gaze, causing it to circulate from one element to another, inviting us to compose, through this visual displacement, a new logic of interconnection within the network.

For the residency at Lindre-Basse, straps, ropes and tyres are the elements that are put back into circulation. The installations experiment with the materials’ powers of resistance, through torsion and stretching, but also a certain form of fragility in their installation. Ella C Bernard often defies gravity in her artworks: lightness is associated with the density of certain materials that are suspended, hung on the wall or arranged on the floor. Plastic strips are woven and rolled up, forming a mesh-like system in which the elements interconnect, thereby reproducing the logic of networking that we ourselves engage in.

Translated by Anna Knight.

The artist residency programme is organised by the CAC - la synagogue de Delme in collaboration with the Lorraine Regional Natural Park and the village of Lindre-Basse.