Laura Thiong-Toye
Born in 1986
Lives and works in Geneva
In her artistic practice, Laura Thiong-Toye draws inspiration from her Reunion Island roots, where popular Hinduism, Christianity, Malagasy beliefs and religious currents from China, Muslim India, the Comoros and Mayotte coexist. Her works offer the possibility of bringing together elements from diverse socio-cultural categories that could never have been found elsewhere.
Passionate about botany, Laura Thiong-Toye develops a world of vases and flowers, shapes, colors and patterns. Everything in her work is designed to take the still life out of its clichés of yesteryear and breathe unexpected life into it, between sparkle and boldness, sometimes baroque, sometimes acidulous, in a no-holds-barred blend of cultures from here and abroad.
“I like overkill... What I show here is still quite sober! I use still lifes as a pretext to break the codes and make them more dynamic. I'm interested in associations of color and form, both in their harmonious and dissonant relationships” Laura Thiong Toye (for Tribune de Genève).
Laura has collaborated as part of the ThiongToye/Racine duo, thanks to which she won the Berthoud Prize (2015) and will take part in the Swiss Art Awards (2014). Since 2018, she has embarked on a personal plastic research project, presenting her work in various exhibitions: at Halle Nord, Geneva, for the Act-Art grant (2020), at the Wilde Galerie in Basel for the Picker Prize nominees (2020), at the CHUV in Geneva for the Prix Berthoud (2015) and at the Swiss Art Awards (2014).
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