wild habitats, exhibition by Léna Durr

Léna Durr, Jean Philippe, 2022 – Courtesy of the artist and the contemporary art center of Châteauvert – © Léna Durr

Léna Durr is interested in the norms and margins of society that she stages in a photographic work that is always tender and a little nostalgic.. The work and the daily life of the artist are one since she herself lives in a mobile home, in Cuers in the Var, in the middle of objects collected since his adolescence. Habitats sauvage is both a work in line with his research and the fruit of his work over several months in residence in 2020 at the art center in partnership with theESADPTM.

“If there is no established definition, the concept of wild habitats, chosen by the artist to describe the living places of the people she went to meet, allows both to embrace the complexity of its approach and the heterogeneity of the situations observed.

As opposed to the notion of domestic, which refers to the idea of ​​the conventional house, that of savage testifies to a desire to subscribe to an unconventional way of living, on the margins or on the edge of society. The wild, is that what we don't know, what has not been domesticated. The savage scares people because they deviate from societal standards.

For ecologists, wild habitats apply to the natural environments in which animals live. In natural spaces, agricultural or forestry, these mobile home inhabitants, caravans, cabins, yourte, and other removable constructions, that the artist presents to us, spend most of their time outdoors and have in common with wild animals, outdoor life, closer to nature and the seasons. With their modest sizes, their self-constructive processes, and the sobriety that characterizes them, their habitats are reminiscent of the nests or burrows of forest animals.

Through his portraits of people who live in wild habitats, Léna Durr relies on ethnographic and documentary work to deploy an intimate and benevolent story, in which she shows paths and ways of life, which escape the established rules, out of step and resistant to imposed standards, unstable territories where notions of wealth, of happiness and free time are called into question.” Alexandre Telliez-Moreni

Exhibition Curator: Lydie Marchi

This exhibition is part of the program of the Rencontres d'Arles as part of the Grand Arles Express.