Reading of the correspondence between Unica Zürn and Hessie
Copyright: library of the Musée d'art Moderne de Paris
Unica Zürn (Berlin, 1916 - Paris, 1970)
The German artist and author Unica Zürn (1916-1970) developed a unique body of work, close to the Surrealist movement. Her ink and engraved drawings reveal a multiplicity of faces, exploring the question of the diffraction of the self and the limits of the body.
During the 1960s, Zürn devoted himself to writing illustrated anagram poems, hybrid objects combining visual art and letters. Oracles et spectacles is a project consisting of fourteen anagram poems composed over a period of ten years and eight etchings produced in 1966, during Unica Zürn's stay at the Maison Blanche psychiatric hospital.
Hessie ( 1936, Spanish Town, Jamaica - 2017, Pontoise, France ), of Caribbean origin, is a unique figure on the French scene of the 1970s, emblematic of artistic expression from the margins (social, racial or disability). Close to the MLF, soft art and the art critic Aline Dallier, she cultivated an elusive and subversive practice that, through the use of embroidery (a medium that was often discredited and always gendered), conquered reserved spaces within a particularly white and masculine art history.
Performance by Simone Lagrand
Simone Lagrand is a poet and pawolèz. Orality is the foundation of her indisciplinary artistic practice. She creates poetic biotopes through a narrative that questions post-colonial algie through notions of language, pleasure and solitude. A former resident of Villa Albertine Miami and Mondes nouveaux prizewinner, her works have recently been presented at HKW (Berlin), Sesc Pompeia (Sao Paulo) and the Pernod Ricard Foundation. Her stories sometimes take the form of sound installations, poetic offerings, videos or ritual events.
Practical info
Photo credit: Hessie, Dessins Microscopiques, 1969-1970, purple thread embroidery on cotton fabric, 48 x 69 cm, © Photo : Béatrice Hatala, © Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre
