Une collection peut en cacher une autre - NMNM - Nouveau Musée National de Monaco

Oriol Vilanova
Share your life with an image, 2019 (détail)

Restitution of the artist in residence workshop in the school environment conducted in partnership with the Direction de l’Education Nationale, de la Jeunesse et des Sports and with the support of the Princely Government

In 2019, the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco initiated an artist’s residency in the two middle schools of the Principality, Collège Charles III and private Institution François d’Assise-Nicolas Barré. Oriol Vilanova intervened in two 8th grade Fine Art option classes from January to June. The students were invited to reflect upon the signification of collecting and how this notion could be applied to an artist’s practice. Each encounter was an opportunity to sensitize the students to the notions of inventory, conservation and the art market linked to the practice of an amateur collector or professional. The outcome of this experiment are two artworks, Share your life with an image (2019) and Une collection peut en cacher une autre (2019).

Share your life with an Image (2019) is a set of old postcards from the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco which the artist suggested the students carry in their jackets, schoolbags or notebooks for several months, speeding up the deterioration process of the image and its paper form and occasionally leading to its total destruction.

Une collection peut en cacher une autre (2019) is a reading of Stefan Zweig’s short story The invisible collection, An Episode of the German Inflation of 1925 (1935) employing multiple voices in which the discourse was communicated from one student to another, as a collection of voices, tonalities and rhythms creating an allegory to the figure of the art collector. This sound piece will also be presented on Sunday September 29 at the Théâtre Princesse Grace during National Heritage Day.

Oriol Villanova’s residency in Monaco also enabled the artist to meet with other collectors. I❤POSTCARDS (2019), presented on the facade of the Villa Sauber was produced for the 40th anniversary of the Postcard Collectors Association in Monaco. The performance Borrowed Words (2017-ongoing) was interpreted twice, once in English by Frabizio Moretti in April and once in Italian by Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaundengo in September.

Old Masters (2019-ongoing) is an invitation to handle the images contained in a work overall. The jacket, which the artist wears whilst hunting for his postcard collection in flea markets, contains Matisse postcards. It is a proposition to consult the reproductions of a major artist, prompting an additional opportunity to question our relationship to the works and the reproductive process. This work is systematically presented responding to one or several works kept in the collections of the museums it is in. Here, it relates to Costume pour un Mandarin (1920), designed by Henri Matisse for the ballet Le Chant du Rossignol which premiered at the Théâtre National de l’Opéra de Paris on February 2, 1920

In his work Oriol Vilanova (born 1980, works and lives in Brussels), interrogates the paradoxes inherent in mass culture, an obsession that has driven him to collect a number of postcards which he seeks out in flea markets. His interest is also centered on the “Becoming Monument” of certain celebrities, icons and ideas, which the 20th century, although behind us, seem as much monstrous as they are comical. His conceptual approach takes its shape in written form based on repetition and exaggeration, minimal installation or performance. However, his work assumes a literary and fictive dimension, appropriating themes of immortality and the relatedness between time, memory and history or heroism.

The students, from the Collège Charles III and the private Institution François d’Assise-Nicolas Barré, having participated in this project are: Clément Chalat, Antoine Maouche, Manon Matilde, Elia Parfenoff, Thomas Rawung, Nicolas Schoepff, Rania Tabarani, Mattéo Tallarico, Theo Balsamo, Fanny Blanchard, Erwan Campana, Lilou Charriere, Manon Choisit, Alexandre Constans, Shaylee Dana, Corentin Doumergue, Audrey Gsegner, Ethan Harroch, Edouard Jouhri, Ambroise Leroy, Jorys Margossian, Aurore Pronzato, Noham Saidi.
The students were presided by their teachers Agathe Poniatowski Vigliani and Patricia Derycke.

Curator: Benjamin Laugier

RELATED CONTENTS