Katerina Samara
Marguerite Vallet-Gilliard : Le fil de la mémoire, avec le regard de Katerina Samara
Technique mixte, Fondation Vallet à Vercorin, VS, 2022
At the begging of the 2022, I started a collaboration with Dora Sagardoyburu with whom, we discovered and explored the work and life of Marguerite Vallet-Gilliard, a painter who was born 100 years before me and died 30 years old. The recherche process was very rich and underlined many questions: How can we approach the work of another artist? How we can be sure that a note is really his/hers? How was to be a woman painter that era? If an artist becomes a parent, does it mean that he/she stops being an artist? Is it possible for a woman artist to continue working after giving birth? How local community sees and interacts with a couple of artists? Who inspire whom in a couple of artists? How was it to be parent and artist? Is it different today? How did she perceive the world? What was she thinking about colours, music, photography, handcrafting, women and society?
This process led me to create two in situ installations made by threads: "je (te) suis" (I follow you/I am) and "la couleur en folie" (the colour in craziness), a collection of interventions on the photos of the artist and her family, as well as a Leporello (folded) notebook where her life is unfolding parallel with mine.
The foundation Vallet, where the exhibition took place, is based on the family house at Vercorin, in Valais.
