Biography
Born in 1960 in France, Lucile Bertrand lives and works between Paris, France, and Brussels, Belgium, since 2001, after having lived for six years in New York. She exhibits regularly in Europe, the US and Asia.
Her work focuses on issues related to the violence of wars and their consequences, migration and inequality in access to the borders, as well as the exploitation of the planet as well as the living. Her creations are characterized by pure lines and an economy of means that nonetheless conceal considerable semantic depth. From everyday tragedies to large-scale catastrophes, her visual metaphors bring forward a subtle and nuanced picture of political and human crises.
Lucile Bertrand claims to work slowly. She likes to spend long periods of time in her studio to mature her research, which is often nourished by literature, sociology and philosophy, as much as she likes to work in situ from the history of places or with people who share their life stories with her — which also requires time and a personal commitment. Between cartographies and landscapes, her drawings are also portraits in depth: they restore the stories of singular people through which the artist approaches vast and plural issues.
Her drawings, as well as some of her work on photographs, imply a reading in the truest sense of the term as many of them contain some text, resulting from her research of her encounters. However, she strives to keep only what is sufficient to describe a situation or to question its meaning. Factual and devoid of adjectives, the text keeps pathos at bay. If there is emotion, it is in what will emerge from the reading of the text and its understanding.
The artist often proceeds by thematic series and, in spite of the recurrence of her concerns, her work takes various forms — works on paper, sculptures, videos, large-scale site-specific installations, sound installations — and she uses a large range of techniques.
“Anchored in a process of constant departitioning and interdependence, Lucile Bertrand distanced practice is seen as an unfolding narrative to be apprehended with patience, according to an approach that is both singular and global, which aims again and again to shed light on phenomena and events that are generally anterior, in order to take a different look at current societal issues.”
Clémentine Davin, in L'art même 82, 4th quarter 2020
“The serious and destabilizing themes of wars and genocides have been conveyed regularly in Lucile Bertrand's visual art for several decades. Using objects, sculptures, drawings and installations — characterized by textual references, delicate materials and spatial agility — the artist consciously conveys the materialization and interrogation of terror and dignity denied in and by society. In 2014, for Do you remember?, she turns to video, exploiting the informative and emotional potential of this medium.”
Véronique Danneels, in exhibition catalogue
Do you Remember?, September 2014