Célie Falières

The titles of Célie Falières’ pieces borrow from natural sciences, literature, popular culture, archaeology, mythology and geography. However, what makes her work so singular is the precise attention she pays to materials, whether poor or noble, and to their transformations, their uses, the way in which they are extracted…
The artist collects raw materials — mineral, vegetal, animal, acoustic and visual — and contextualises them, archives them and explores the crafts they are linked to. “To know is not to see [...] but to act”٭. In the spirit of pragmatism, she welcomes the experience of letting things surprise her. Not knowing invites experimentation.
Whether she is sharing her enthusiastic practice of ceramics with a baker, pushing the limits of glass blowing beyond usefulness, or deconstructing the codes of leatherworking, Célie Falières seeks out the porosity between learning processes, practices, objects and their uses. She accepts and is comfortable with the shortcomings and vacant spaces that are needed to move between projects. Armed with a playful awareness of the ambiguity that exists between art and craftsmanship, she collects the fragments of a body of work that she weaves together with each learnt — and always questioned — gesture. As such, she has made the phrase “To do is to think” hers. Objects, while they have an existence of their own, beautiful and/or useful, are further enhanced during her performances. Danced or acted out, they become new rituals in the service of the creation of a story and a language, in which the memory of a landscape (of its resources) and the presence of a body are indispensable arcana.

Martine Michard, February 2024

٭John Dewey, Art as Experience, New York, 1934

Translated by Lucy Pons, 2024