Born in 1956 in Charleville-Mézières (Ardennes). Lives in Kanazawa (Japan).
The encounter with the work of Japanese artist Arakawa Shusaku, which Cécile Andrieu studied at the University of Aix-Marseille I / 1980, made her discover Japanese culture. She graduated a scolarship from the Japanese government and then from the Japan Foundation in 1982, where she studied linguistics and aesthetics at the University of Tokyo, leading to a PhD in plastic arts (Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne, 1986). This was the beginning of a reflection on the man-space – language relationship then more focused onhe says.
In her work the word is sometimes present as such, sometimes just suggested, but always invested with a silent presence or, better, with a presence that endeavors to awaken silence rather than to fill it. She sees this presence as essential to rethink our relationship with the word and deepen our experience of reality.
Cécile Andrieu works on small objects as well as on large installations generally in close relation with the place and its public. Many of her recent work is made from dictionaries or alphabets. They interest her not only because they represent the essence of a language but also because, out of context, they contain both a strong ambiguity and a rich potential that she tries to exploit visually stimulate the eye as well as the mind, and awaken the public for new resonances or questionings. the word itself, which will give birth to a new artistic production.
Is there a way to see the world without being influenced by words? How can we penetrate the “thick crust of speech” (Italo Calvino) which weighs more and more on the world and blinds us, and penetrate more deeply into reality? This has been her questioning since the early 1990s. “I do not pretend to deny the vitality of the word for man. On the contrary, by making it become the means of its own overcoming, I emphasize its value, ” she says.
In her work the word is sometimes present as such, sometimes just suggested, but always invested with a silent presence or, better, with a presence that endeavors to awaken silence rather than to fill it. She sees this presence as essential to rethink our relationship with the word and deepen our experience of reality.
Cécile Andrieu works on small objects as well as on large installations generally in close relation with the place and its public. Many of her recent work is made from dictionaries or alphabets. They interest her not only because they represent the essence of a language but also because, out of context, they contain both a strong ambiguity and a rich potential that she tries to exploit visually stimulate the eye as well as the mind, and awaken the public for new resonances or questionings.
