« Shine Bright », Arles

On the occasion of the Rencontres de la Photographie, Julia Marchand and her curatorial initiative Extramentale has partnered with the nomadic project space Sans titre (2016) to propose a collective exhibition at the invitation of Galerie Huit, Arles.

« Shine Bright » strikes an ode to adolescence and its rituals: aesthetic, amorous, of belonging or of claiming to belong. Extramentale presents the work of Gaia Vincensini and Sabrina Röthlisberger, previously shown in the Marseille region amid the exhibition « Sueurs Chaudes » (2017), devoted to the feminine gothic. Their works seem to possess the allure of furniture, or of clothing, and will be juxtaposed with the sensual and romantic photographs of Indigo Lewin, presented by Sans titre (2016).

The practice of Sabrina Röthlisberger is marked by her feminist engagement and her spirit of collectivity, which is close to the model of guilds. In 2014, alongside Loren Kagny, Giulia Essyad and Gaia Vincensini, she founded the female collective LGG$B, an acronym for “Loren, Giulia, Gaia, Sabrina, Billionnaire.” Two years later, she formed the group House with Gaia Vincensini, who was one of the G’s of LGG$B. In a refusal of obedience to the rules of the art market, the artist multiplies the formats of creation, such as the hair salon and the furniture-works, which assume a character of domestic vengeance. Animated by the desire to infuse herself with feminist literature, she assembled a roving library entitled “Notre Matrimoine.”

Gaia Vincensini is carried by this same spirit of a “practice of proximity” which comes to mean, for her, the rehabilitation of antiquated techniques of fabrication of images and the creation of urban costumes. Thus, engraving becomes the crucible of her personal expression and the site of resurgences of the gothic spirit deriving from her most familiar environment: the city of Geneva.