Laure Prouvost Solo Exhibition At The Moody Center For The Arts Opens September 15

The Moody Center for the Arts will present the first solo exhibition in Texas of the celebrated French artist Laure Prouvost, opening September 15 and on view through December 14, 2023. The exhibition Above Front Tears Nest in South invites visitors on an intriguing journey, engaging both the body and the mind through multisensorial installations, combining video, sculpture, and textiles in a mind-bending setting that creates a humorous, idiosyncratic experience.  

Prouvost, an award-winning visual artist who overturns traditional modes of perception, transforms the Moody galleries into a liminal space between reality and imagination. The exhibition features large-scale, multimedia installations, found objects, sculptures, tapestries, architectural assemblages, and videos that interact with the building's architecture through a whimsical mode of display. Exploring themes of eco-feminism and environmentalism, Prouvost uses objects in surprising and provocative ways, combining them with personal and imagined memories. This unconventional approach extends to language, made tangible by the exhibition title's play on words.  

“We are honored to present the work of Laure Prouvost, whose thought-provoking practice reflects the Moody's mission of fostering interdisciplinary conversation through the arts,” says Executive Director Alison Weaver. “Touching on themes relating to feminism, consumerism, environmental degradation, and the history of surrealism, Moody visitors will have the opportunity to experience Prouvost's unique vision through a layered landscape that is both personal and universal.”

“Through Laure Prouvost's surrealist work, the visitor embarks on a mesmerizing journey, flying South and then nesting at the Moody, referencing Houston's unique location on the North American migratory paths for birds. The disruptive presence of reality is introduced through an installation that evokes oil spills and their catastrophic consequences for the environment,” explains curator Frauke V. Josenhans. “Prouvost's vision highlights some of the critical issues of our time, as seen through the lens of eco-feminism, and at the same time asks the visitor to forego set expectations and let the mind levitate in a space of boundless freedom.” 

Glass-blown birds nesting in the exhibition galleries, hybrid creatures floating between earth and sky, tapestries that evoke matriarchal figures, grotto-like tunnels leading from the dark into light, and other surprises, are part of the fantastical universe created by Laure Prouvost for the Moody Center for the Arts. With its distinctive design by Diogo Passarinho Studio, the exhibition juxtaposes an ethereal world with a grim, industrial landscape.  Welcomed by a sprinkling indoor water fountain, visitors enter Prouvost's strange world to immediately experience the evocative power of nature, bodies, and language, guided by a large tapestry. The first encounter includes the video Every Sunday, Grand Ma, projected in the Media Art Gallery. A recurrent protagonist in Prouvost's artistic universe, Grand Ma transforms into a human bird in this video work, leaving the dark grounds behind her to fly over the clouds, unbound and weightless like a celestial creature, looking at the world from a bird's eye view.

As the visitor proceeds through the Brown Foundation Gallery, a bleak image of the Anthropocene unfolds, with its gloomy environment occupied by pipes, detritus of our consumerist society, and oil leaks. Virtual reality elements and videos introduce aspects of our digital age, and yet traces of nature are present, creating subtle points of connection as visitors find their way through oil puddles, dunes, and soil.   The Nest, a monumental structure between the two main exhibition galleries, evokes a natural bird habitat while functioning as a transitional space that visitors enter and cross before arriving at a utopian landscape that occupies the Central Gallery, filled with fog, a soft mountain to climb and rest upon, and levitating objects.   Overall, the exhibition conjures a compassionate, hopeful future where humans live as part of nature, rather than working against it. Every element, be it large or small, natural or manufactured, plays a role in helping us imagine a more productive and positive way to inhabit this world. 

Laure Prouvost: Above Front Tears Nest in South will coincide with the conference of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS) taking place in Houston, November 9–11, 2023.    The exhibition Laure Prouvost: Above Front Tears Nest in South is curated by Frauke V. Josenhans, Curator, Moody Center for the Arts. The exhibition design is by Diogo Passarinho Studio. A selection of works and exhibition elements were originally produced for the exhibition The Fredriksen Commission: Laure Prouvost. Above Front Tears Oui Float, at the National Museum in Oslo, Norway, 2022.   The exhibition is made possible by the Moody Center for the Arts Founders Circle and the Elizabeth Lee Moody Excellence Fund for the Arts. Above Front Tears Nest in South is supported by Etant donnés Contemporary Art, a program of Villa Albertine.

Laure Prouvost (b. 1978, Lille, France) received her BFA from Central Saint Martins, London in 2002 and completed studies towards her MFA at Goldsmiths College, London. Prouvost was awarded the Turner Prize in 2013 and the Max Mara Prize for Women in 2011, among other awards. In 2016 she was distinguished as Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite, and in 2019 was made Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The artist created her first public commission in the United Kingdom through Transport for London's Art on the Underground in 2019, and represented France at the Venice Biennale that same year. Prouvost lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
 

Special Events

Friday, September 15, 2023, 6–8 pm Opening Reception with the artist   Saturday, September 16, 2–3 pm Artists-in-Dialogue: Laure Prouvost + Jacqueline Couti A multi-voice conversation between the artist, Jacqueline Couti, chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Literatures and Cultures (MCLC) at Rice University, and other faculty members.

Thursday, October 26, 6 - 8 pm Dimensions Variable: Oliver Halkowich An original dance performance inspired by the exhibition choreographed by Oliver Halkowich, former Houston Ballet Soloist, and now choreographer at the New Orleans Ballet Theatre.

Saturday, November 4, 3–5 pm New Art/New Music  A presentation of original scores composed in response to the Laure Prouvost installation created by Rice University's Shepherd School of Music students.

Since its opening in 2017, the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University has dedicated its resources to encouraging creative thinking and original expression, enriching curricular innovation, and promoting cross-campus and community collaboration through transformative encounters with the arts. A public-facing institution, the Moody serves as a connection between the arts at Rice and the greater Houston community.

The Moody mounts three exhibitions a year in its award-winning building, curates numerous temporary and permanent public art installations throughout Rice's campus, and hosts performances, conversations, classes, and hands-on workshops. By centering these public and open initiatives on generative partnerships with artists, scholars, and students from various disciplines, the Moody presents unexpected and everchanging entry points into the arts which bridge communities and areas of interest.

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