Cathryn Boch

Scratch, tear, caress, fold, pierce, erase, sand, sew... Those movements, sensual or brusque but always tactile, allow Cathryn Boch to grasp her materials, collected on her travels sometimes but always bringing to mind where she lives, Marseille, a frontier town with a tormented history.

And so film transparencies, rugs, tracings, maps, aerial photographs and even satellite photos are stitched together to constitute mental landscapes with solid materiality, bringing to mind flayed bodies or excavated shreds from archeological digs. Their guts offer a glimpse of borders, breaks and scars. The elements are combined through the ambivalence of stitching, which simultaneously unites and assaults: joining together is achieved by piercing; repairing is the result of stabbing. And so the stitches are visible, acknowledged, maintaining a fragile equilibrium. To the violence of borders and demarcation lines respond scars, echoes of blocked migrations, here and now or on a planetary scale.

Contesting hierarchies, such as cartographic authority, the fragility of matter combines with the spirit of insurrection, just like the words that spring from a map: "revolts always stay in the middle of the road." Issues of scale, blurred, between the private space and collective bodies. Pieces torn between drawing and sculpture (without front or back), which simply demand to be examined and, in this exhibition, operate as frames or gateways, engendering free movement of the gaze and a dialogue, multiplying gestures of hospitality that bring them to life. "It is about installing, not imposing," remarks Cathryn Boch. Another way of challenging authority.

In partnership with les Abattoirs, Musée – Frac Occitanie Toulouse.