Sleeping room n°9, 2023
Frac Auvergne, Clérmont Ferrand, France
https://fracauvergne.fr/exposition/johanna-mirabel/
If Johanna Mirabel is part of the great comeback of figurative painting that the art world has been witnessing for some years now, she nevertheless takes a singular path by taking her representations beyond reality, or, more precisely, by making another world emerge and coexist alongside real space. On the surface of her works, the real is distorted and enlarged, giving rise to what might be called an imaginary back-world, which makes its way into the transparency of the material, settles in the hollow of the reserve, and branches out along the many vanishing points. In large-format canvases, this new imaginary world takes its place in a resolutely open space, permeable to all influences and languages.
Presenting a vast selection of works, Habiter le chaos highlights the plural plastic identity that Johanna Mirabel has elaborated, in a strong affinity with the thought of Martinique writer Édouard Glissant, to whom the title of this exhibition refers. In his concept of "chaos-world", Édouard Glissant calls chaos the profound multicultural upheaval that the world's troubled history has provoked. For him, it is essential today to view this chaos in a positive light - rather than apprehending it as a potential threat - because it has created fertile zones of contact where numerous identities meet, influence and form each other.
Mindful of this thought, Johanna Mirabel develops her painting as a mirror of the world's dynamics, transforming the space of her canvas into a hybrid, shifting space of exchange, where identities are never set in stone. On the surface of the works, the figures stand in an in-between position, entirely permeable to their surroundings - like the veins of the wood merging transparently with those of the bodies - and at the same time asserting their presence, which translates on canvas into more meticulous draftsmanship.
The artist's recent interest in Guyana's Carnival extends these reflections. A perfect example of syncretism, the carnival is a moment of transgressive power when all identities (social, gender...) are, for a few days, redefined. However, Johanna Mirabel's world is not one of mawkish universalism; it remains an intranquil world on the surface of which catastrophe is never far away. Scenes of floods and fires, and references to ex-votos, insinuate the threat of a possible and unpredictable collapse. Faced with this reality, Johanna Mirabel seeks to think, from the intimate, of other ways of inhabiting the world that would embrace all the sensitivities of this chaos.
Presenting a vast selection of works, Habiter le chaos highlights the plural plastic identity that Johanna Mirabel has elaborated, in a strong affinity with the thought of Martinique writer Édouard Glissant, to whom the title of this exhibition refers. In his concept of "chaos-world", Édouard Glissant calls chaos the profound multicultural upheaval that the world's troubled history has provoked. For him, it is essential today to view this chaos in a positive light - rather than apprehending it as a potential threat - because it has created fertile zones of contact where numerous identities meet, influence and form each other.
Mindful of this thought, Johanna Mirabel develops her painting as a mirror of the world's dynamics, transforming the space of her canvas into a hybrid, shifting space of exchange, where identities are never set in stone. On the surface of the works, the figures stand in an in-between position, entirely permeable to their surroundings - like the veins of the wood merging transparently with those of the bodies - and at the same time asserting their presence, which translates on canvas into more meticulous draftsmanship.
The artist's recent interest in Guyana's Carnival extends these reflections. A perfect example of syncretism, the carnival is a moment of transgressive power when all identities (social, gender...) are, for a few days, redefined. However, Johanna Mirabel's world is not one of mawkish universalism; it remains an intranquil world on the surface of which catastrophe is never far away. Scenes of floods and fires, and references to ex-votos, insinuate the threat of a possible and unpredictable collapse. Faced with this reality, Johanna Mirabel seeks to think, from the intimate, of other ways of inhabiting the world that would embrace all the sensitivities of this chaos.
Born in 1991, Johanna Mirabel graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2019. That same year, she won the 10th edition of the Bourse Révélations Emerige. In 2023, she benefited from a residency at the Fondation H and took part in the Immortelle exhibition at MO.CO (Montpellier).
Habiter le chaos is the artist's first solo exhibition in an institution.
Laure Forlay, exhibition curator
