Silsila

In collaboration with poet Francine Clavien, Laurence Bonvin presents "Silsila", a sequence of three pairs of images combining photography and text.

Taken at Gebel el-Silsila, an ancient Egyptian sandstone quarry from which the stones of Luxor from which the stones of Luxor Temple are notably derived, these photographs question the temporality and materiality of the age-old rock, the cutting and extraction. The time of the mineral, the photograph, the text and their assembly converge and intermingle in this project. Words and images, singular objects, are processed through a poetic process that creates rhythm and a sense of density. It requires us both to explore the meaning and to transfer it to the images and texts that follow. By bringing opposing semantic pairs into dialogue, this sequence evokes the interrelation of elements, rhythms and structure. In addition to the powerful yet minimalist way in which a word is affixed to the image, the use of the photographic negative distances the work from reality, providing a chromatic and temporal detachment, while at the same time accentuating the importance of the details that recall the different wefts in the stone. The notion of "restricted action" (Stéphane Mallarmé, 1897) is at the heart of this approach. Art is neither all-powerful nor utopian. meaning, but through ruptures and clashes. The work of Laurence Bonvin and Francine Clavien underlines the poetic, symbolic and formal dimensions of a place that is the bearer of history, and more generally, of our History.

LAURENCE BONVIN
Born in Sierre, Laurence Bonvin currently lives and works between Switzerland and Lisbon. Trained at the ENSP (École nationale supérieure de la photographie) in Arles, she has taught photography at the ECAL (École cantonale d'art et de design de Lausanne) since 2001. Her work has won numerous awards, including the Swiss Art Award (2002 and 2006), the Swiss Camera Prize at the Winterthur International Short Film Days (2016) and the Swiss Film Prize at the Fantoche International Animation Festival in Baden. She has spent several artistic periods abroad, including Pro Helvetia artist residencies in Cairo (2021) and South Africa (2009), and with Black Rock in Dakar (2019). Laurence Bonvin exhibits regularly in Switzerland and abroad, and many of her works can be found in public and private collections.

FRANCINE CLAVIEN
Francine Clavien, a poet from the Valais born in Miège, studied literature in Geneva and Lausanne. She co-edits the Babel section of the online magazine Les Carnets de Poédiles, which focuses on contemporary poetry and self-translation, a veritable literary phenomenon. She has published three collections with Empreintes ("Terre arraisonnée", 2001, "Été visionnaire" in 2002 and "C'est bien ici que je vis" in 2004). Her most recent publications are: "Berlin en vie", éditions alla Chiara Fonte, Lugano, 2013; "Aux mots de courir le monde", éditions Sicania, Marseille, 2013 (cross-translation with Polish poet Marcin Kurek); "Chemins sans sommeil", éditions Samizdat, Geneva, 2014.