ARIANE BOSQUET
*1959

Ariane Bosquet's artistic approach draws its energy and influences from her travels to the far reaches of Africa's diverse landscapes. Metal, paper, canvas, fabrics, plant fibres, sand, collages and natural pigments are repurposed to create predominantly material-based works imbued with symbolic meaning in relation to the worlds that surround, permeate and challenge her.

For the past ten years, her work has focused on three areas:

• -work on canvas and metal, using rusted metal recovered in Mali and reworked with her materials, and more recently, oxidised zinc recovered from old roofs
• work on paper, canvas and textiles, with a common thread of indigo blue textiles, a natural dye produced mainly in Mali
• most recently, work involving the recomposition and assembly of pieces of paper, canvas and plant fibres, with a common thread of exile, disappearance and identity.

«In its continuity, the work reveals a kinship with Arte Povera. From being "insignificant", the objects become "significant". In a silent dramaturgy, the artist speaks to us of the human drama of maritime emigration. What can we say about the implacable contrast in terminis of the word 'flamboyant', the fruit so close in form to the modest pirogue? Or the greyish blue-green of some shattered metal sheets, the remains of a shipwreck? A shipwreck, no doubt, of illusions born in a society in distress."
Michel Van Lierde, July 2016.