IN SITU | 2016-2026
The In situ project consists of ephemeral interventions in public space. I work within transitional spaces, where I inscribe words in the local language. These fragments, tied to a specific place and moment, express emotional states and both disrupt and reveal our perception of the landscape.
Works in situ, chalk, collage, spray paint / 28 photographs.
ALL WE CAN DO IS REMAIN STANDING | 2024
The installation adopts the codes of window displays announcing the permanent closure of stores. The sentence On ne peut rien faire d'autre que tenir debout (All we can do is remain standing), placed within this context, resonates not only with the shopkeepers losing their businesses, but also with current events. Élodie Merland explores how to respond to what is happening around her. The shop, emptied of its activity, its emptiness emphasised by this sentence, highlights the disaster surrounding us and the need to remain standing, the necessity of holding on to life while the world around us collapses.
Work in situ, adhesive letters, variable dimensions.
Art Au Centre #14 / Liège, Belgium (February-April 2024).
CHILDREN OF WATER | 2022
This installation stems from two books I read: Happening by Annie Ernaux and Hysteric by Nelly Arcan. In them, the authors recount their experiences of abortion in different periods. The title, Children of water, is a translation of the Japanese word “mizuko”, a term referring to children who die without seeing the daylight. Twenty-seven cobblestones are each pierced with a blue knitting needle, the same color used by Annie Ernaux in 1963. The number twenty-seven refers to the abortions carried out by Marie-Louise Giraud, the only French angel maker to have been guillotined, in 1943, for her actions.
Installation, 27 granite cobblestones, 27 acrylic knitting needles, variable dimensions / 3 photographs.
EMBRACE | 2022
CARESSE MA LANGUE AVEC LA TIENNE (caress my tongue with yours) is written in maca powder and installed on a concrete slab. The sentence obviously evokes a languorous kiss, but it also suggests an exchange between cultures, an encounter, a form of fusion. Maca is a plant known for its many virtues, including its ability to enhance sexual desire.
Installation, steel, concrete, wood, maca powder, 170x30x100cm.
MURMURES | 2021
Murmures aims to create connections between spectators through small gestures that I initiate.
Throughout the performance, the audience receives elements intended for one person, each time different. To obtain all the information, communication is necessary. Murmures defied Covid-19 and social distancing, it is a performance that calls for contact and exchange. It speaks about our relationship with others, and the necessity, or not, of living together.
The French word "murmure" refers to the flight of starlings that move in groups in order to protect themselves from danger.
Performance, variable duration.
OUT OF ORDER | 2018-2021
“Nearly ten years later, Élodie Merland returned to the places where she narrated her descriptions (One hour galleries); not a single telephone box. The artist then took a photograph of these spaces freed of their cramped edifices. The artist’s photographs evoke that which has been erased rather than buried. Moreover, they do not refer to History’s tragic events, but rather to the histories of the billions of non-recorded conversations, deemed unimportant and inenarrable, that were shared through hundreds of thousands of now obsolete telephone boxes.”
Arnaud Dejeammes, Waiting, attentiveness (extract), 2021.
52 photographs / book, 20x29cm, 72 pages.
WEAKNESS | 2020
On a concrete pillow, the sentence JE ME RETIENDRAI DE SAISIR CET OREILLER POUR T’ÉTOUFFER (I will stop myself from grabbing this pillow to suffocate you) is engraved. This pillow could belong to a slightly unmade bed, sheets that carry a sense of lived experience. The sentence speaks of love and death, of domestic violence, of that brief instant when, in a surge of anger, sadness, and helplessness, one might, in a single gesture, kill the person they love. That moment in which one refrains from committing the irreversible.
Sculpture, concrete, 56x49x15cm.
LOVE IS WAITING | 2017-2020
Love is waiting is a non-exhaustive list of my expectations for love – past or present – written in English, a language that is not my own. Each phrase is followed by a silence of a varied length. There are two versions of this performance. The first was to say the text by walking a hundred paces toing and froing over a few meters. The second was set up during the first lockdown of 2020, it was broadcast live on social networks from my home. My face was filmed in close-up so that the viewer could read my expressions there.
Performance, variable duration / video, 19'16" / book, 13.4x20cm, 32 pages.
WAVES NEVER STOP CROSSING BORDERS | 2019
This video was made on 30th October 2019 on a beach in Folkestone, United Kingdom. It was the day before the UK was due to leave the European Union. This was the third postponed date at that time, but the withdrawal was ultimately delayed until 31st January 2020. The reading direction of the sentence WAVES NEVER STOP CROSSING BORDERS is oriented towards France. This sentence evokes Brexit, but it also speaks of all the borders that thousands of people are forbidden to cross every day.
Intervention in situ, spray paint / video, 13'25".
WANDERING | 2019
In the garden of the Sisters of Providence (Namur,BE) there is a path that leads nowhere. This space, rich in irony and poetry, particularly attracts me, notably for its discretion. In my work, I am strongly drawn to places that tend to leave us indifferent because of their banality. I like to shed a different light on them. This path reminds me of life itself, of our journey, not in its linearity, of course, but in its purpose. A goal, a destination. We constantly need to know where we are going and what awaits us at the end. But does a walk necessarily need an ultimate purpose? Isn't it the whole journey that we should consider and appreciate?
Installation, reinforced concrete, 227x16x7.5cm.
LIEFDE IS WACHTEN | 2019
I re-performed the work Love is waiting for the exhibition Ménage à trois in Ghent. The text was expanded with two additional sentences and translated into Dutch. I thus encountered a real process of memory and pronunciation work, as this language had until then been relatively unfamiliar to me.
Performance, variable duration / sound recording, 16'07".
MÉNAGE À TROIS | 2019
Group exhibition.
Mira Albrecht invites Élodie Merland and Ed Sanders to a Belgian/French/British “ménage à trois”. An artistic cohabitation at Poort 8, focusing on the notions of interiority and intimacy.
Poort 8 / Ghent, Belgium (May-June 2019).
ESCAPADE | 2018
What if we slipped away for a moment? Set aside our daily routines. Talk about nothing and everything, about love, sex, death, oblivion, time, loneliness, laughter. Speak of old age without mentioning wrinkles. Following a residency in early 2018 at the Schadet-Vercoustre Foundation – a nursing home in Bourbourg, in the north of France – I wrote a series of words born from conversations and observations. Time spent with around twenty residents, mostly women, their memories fading. We would (often) meet for the first time. Friendships would form. Tenderness would settle in. And then I would go for a piss and they would forget me.
Installation, corten steel, variable dimensions / book, 24x32cm, 2x24 pages.
UN ŒIL À L'OREILLE | 2017
Summer 2017, I walk through the city of Roubaix, its streets, its neighbourhoods. In my bag, my camera. In the open air, my eyes wide open, attentive, listening, ready to be surprised. I capture light, colours and compositions: traces of everyday consumption. Gradual transformations. Decay and abandonment. And then, writing and words. Rubbish becomes still-life. Neighbourhoods evolve at their own pace. My eyes focus on the light settling over the city, revealing these districts as they are. Real. Harsh. Raw. Sincere. Endearing.
30 photographs / book, 14.8x21cm, 44 pages.
SHOWDOWN | 2017
Solo exhibition following an artist residency in Folkestone in summer 2016.
La Plate-Forme / Dunkirk, France (January 2017).
SANDGATE ROAD | 2017
“Transferred from page to wall, in white on a white background, the sentence IN THIS STREET ALMOST DESERTED, A MAN SILENTLY PLAYS MUSIC might easily go unnoticed, just as the event from which it originates could have gone unnoticed as well. As is often the case in Élodie Merland's work, it requires a certain attentiveness.”
François Coadou, The discreet charm of details (extract), 2017.
White painting on white wall, variable dimensions.
SEE MY BREATH | 2016
The twenty-two concrete letters, weighing between six and fifteen kilos, are placed in piles on the ground. I move them. I write. With the constant back and forth, my breathlessness increases. JE PLIERAI LES DRAPS SEULE (I will fold the sheets alone) is the sentence I compose. Sometimes I think that the only reason to live as a couple is practical. One gesture that, for me, perfectly represents this is folding sheets. Sheets inevitably also represent love. The combination of the sensuality of fabric and the rawness of concrete seemed to me a fitting way to speak about love and its pain.
Performance, variable duration / sound recording, 11'03" / installation, 22 reinforced concrete letters, variable dimensions.
IS SHE COUNTING WAVES | 2016
Finger pointing towards the horizon, I let the many summer tourists interpret what I am silently trying to show them. Is it the sea? The sky? The pebbles? The seagulls? Or, quite simply, further away? France. The border. Those who find themselves there, waiting, hoping, attempting to cross. The gesture I make will last until my arm gives way. And so I remained, finger pointing, for two hours and twenty-eight minutes.
Performance/video, 02:28'00".
WESH MA COUILLE | 2013-2015
Both connected by our mobile phones, one took on the role of teacher, dictating to the other the words spoken by passers-by she overheard in the street. The second became the student, a young woman tasked with transcribing fragments of conversation. When passers-by were absent or silent, the exercise took on a different rhythm, giving way to a series of silences of varying durations, and the dictation thus turned into a motionless choreography.
The teacher listened for every word; the student, in turn, waited attentively for the next dictation.
Performance, variable duration /video, 1:55'00".
With Gaëlle Le Floch.
CONCERTS INAUDIBLES | 2012
Solo exhibition at the invitation of IDEA-Z (International Domestic Exhibitions by Affinity).
Olivier Lemesle's studio / Rennes, France (June 2012).
DIKU? | 2010
Exhibition of graduating students from the Toulon School of Fine Arts and Design - Toulon Provence Méditerranée.
Espace d’art Le Moulin / La Valette-du-Var, France (October 2010).
CONCERT FOR 52 PHONE BOXES | 2010
On 15th May 2010, during the European Night of Museums, at 9 p.m. at the LAAC, Lieu d’Art et Action Contemporaine (Dunkirk), a concert was performed by 52 people equipped with mobile phones and standing at 52 music stands. A screen replaced the conductor and displayed a digital timer counting down the seconds. Each musician dialled a telephone number corresponding to one of the phone boxes located between Dunkirk and Toulon, thus performing an inaudible score.
Movements – calling, waiting, listening – evoke a choreography.
Performance, 10'00" / video, 13'50" / 52 scores, A3.
ONE HOUR GALLERIES | 2009-2010
From May 2009 to May 2010, every Sunday and for one hour only, I occupied 52 telephone boxes. Each of them, transformed for the occasion into approximately 1m² galleries, became a space where I awaited calls from people I had previously invited to contact me. I would then describe four views made up of details and incidents in front of me, their cardinal orientation corresponding to the boxes’ four windows. Each description lasted around ten minutes, with the number of calls per gallery ranging from one to six in the best cases. All these immobile wanderings now read like sonic postcards, their address illuminating a reality that is heard.
Performance, 1 year / book, 19.7x11cm, 198 pages.
MY HEART IS SMOTHERED, THE REST WITHERS | 2009
Work in situ and video made made in De Panne (Belgium) by the NSS collective (Kévin Bogaert, Béchir Boussandel, Élodie Merland, Laurent Varlet and Wenxi Xiong).
Work in situ, aerosol spray paint and dust sheet / video, 03'11" / photograph.