Stéphanie Saadé

Un mot sur tant de bouches

7 January - 25 February 2023


With « Un Mot sur Tant de Bouches » (A Word on so many Mouths), Stéphanie Saadé plays with familiarity as if it were a sensitive cord. Her performative work Aujourd’hui j’ai eu envie d’un changement de perspective (Today I Felt Like a Change in Perspective)(2022) forecasts a shift casting away the shadow of forgetfulness and disinterest. Values are reshuffled like as many cards long held in hand; the sedimentation of gestures, habits, are prominent points towards which our attention is henceforth directed. In the web of her memory, attachment is the tenuous thread, holding together the edifice of time. The touch of a sheet, the triviality of its patterns (Stage of Life, 2022), the wood of a game board (Échiquier (Chessboard) 2022), suggest the familiarity of everyday life, as much as standardized clothes or furniture (Pyramide, 2022, IKEA, 2022), whose triviality is a commonplace. These objects are hers, but they remind us of habits which are also ours.

The works that she presents at Anne Barrault gallery tell the story of an exploration by diving into the smallest things. The past that they summon is that of time that flows gently and continues to resonate within us. Many artists who use salvaged materials, such as the new realists, are interested in the indicial status of objects. Used as the supports of memory, they are worth for, suggest absences and the flesh of the past. Like these artists, Stéphanie Saadé is interested in objects, which are the discreet companions of similar trivialities. However, her work, far from summoning relics, materializes transformation and becoming. By fitting her teenage bed linen to the size of her Parisian flat, (Stage of Life, 2022) she asserts the power of adaptation, like  a growth of the inanimate. So does the past live, caught up in the circular economy of the intimate, such as shown in Cercle Familial (2022) and Where Eyes Rest (2021). The circle made with the hair of three generations of women unites different temporalities in a shared present. The past, in Stéphanie Saadé’s work, invites no nostalgia; on the contrary it is the breeding ground of a germination whose growing bloom she observes. Life instinct in her work feeds on memory and sharing.

Déborah Laks

 


Stéphanie Saadé
Échiquier, 2022
used chessboard, mother of pearl
47 x 47 cm
(photograph Aurélien Mole)

 

exhibition view Un mot sur tant de bouche by Stéphanie Saadé
(photograph Aurélien Mole)

Stéphanie Saadé
Pyramide (t-shirts), 2022
bodies and t-shirts of all existing sizes (from 0-1 months to XXL), yarn
80 x 90 cm
(photograph Aurélien Mole)


Stéphanie Saadé
Une nuit à l’hôtel, 2022
Rotana Centro Barsha (Dubaï), 15 – 19 September 2022
wire from Rotana Centro Barsha Hotel (Dubai), September 15 – 19, 2022, used pillowcase (60 x 65 cm), thermo lacquered metal structure.
60 x 65 cm
(photograph Aurélien Mole)

Stéphanie Saadé
Une nuit à l’hôtel, 2022 (detail)
Rotana Centro Barsha (Dubaï), 15 – 19 September 2022
60 x 65 cm
(photograph Aurélien Mole)

Stéphanie Saadé
Pyramide (socks), 2022
socks of all existing sizes (from 0-1 month to 42), yarn
14 x 32 cm
(photograph Aurélien Mole)


Stéphanie Saadé
Stéphanie Saadé, 2022
« Le monde de la fantaisie », Eric et Lucy Kincaid, Artima, collection Contes, Tourcoing, 1981
book page, graphite
19 x 12 cm / with frame : 32 x 26 cm
(photograph Aurélien Mole)