Line Clément  

Line Clément makes installations, performances, prints and paintings often combining all media into one exhibition or event. Themes such as alchemy, magic, the spiritual and the natural world are often connected with urban related social issues.

She is a co-founder of studio Alma, an etching workshop in Lyon. Art without the dimension of magic and the sacred, for me, is of no interest.

My aim is to find the 'active zone' within a work of art that links to our human destiny.

Statues or masks from Africa, Oceania or even from 'our' Middle Ages stimulate fascination, contemplation or fear. Some contemporary works of art have the same power although the are often considered meaningless because the context in which they appear lacks spirituality.

For me art must be a means of liberation and protection - like a talisman. My paintings are made in the spirit of and are intended to function as talismans. Whether art is temporary (performance work) or permanent (such as paintings or sculpture), it should create an 'aesthetic shock' - it should have a deep affect for a long time. It should have the strength to restore -to cure and to quicken the soul. Art needs two conditions to work. First an ethical committment on the part of the artist involving no manipulation of the public and second, to avoid imitation. Because art is about breaking away from the expected or from imitation it requires openness on the part of the public.

My performance work is prepared beforehand but a never repeated so that it is never pure improvisation nor rehearsed theatre. Their purpose is to create a sense of catharsis, a means of expression, (an aesthetic scream) as well as a means of self purification. I will describe one performance in detail.

The performance, Ranger les couteaux et voir dormir le sable (Put away the knives and watch the sand sleeping), was a response to the systematic rape of Moslem women in the Yugoslavian war.

It began with an alarm going off in the middle of where the public were gathered while I walked into a central space dressed in green army trousers and red anorak (padded jacket) with the hood pulled over my head. I wound up a toy plastic soldier, setting it down to walk towards a pink cloth which had been spread out. On this black butcher's knives and three tomatoes had been arranged.

I then threatened the public with a Swiss army knive which automatically opened as I waved it around in the air. When the toy soldier reached the pink cloth, I raced across towards it, taking a knife in each hand and violently stabbed at the three tomatoes. (Later during the exhibition these violated tomatoes then rot and stink.) Then I ran to the back wall to ten paintings. Each depicted death's head (two were framed with mirrors) and from each painting hung a white butcher's knife. Seeing myself in a mirror I cried out in horror at the sight of the red stains on my clothing. First I took off the hood then the jacket revealing a vest made out of animal hair underneath. I removed this vest laying it on the ground near the tomatoes and placed a piece of black marble on it with some parsley (symbollizing a burial ceremony).