Jeanne Vicerial
Pupation
Jeanne Vicerial, the young and sensationally talented French textile artist, has a new show at TEMPLON Paris where she unveils the result of two years spent exploring the notion of metamorphosis.
For the Pupation exhibition, Vicerial fills the gallery’s original space in Rue Beaubourg in Paris with her “presences”, the large sculptures in crocheted or smoothed black thread that are so characteristic of her practice.
The show is an ode to transformation in all its facets. Vicerial depicts it in various forms: as an awakening of the material, illustrated by the work in tribute to Pierre Soulages where the beyond-black thread stretched taut on the canvas suddenly flows in waves to the floor; as artistic creation via a process of exploration and experimentation, the process that precedes the nascent work, and as the gestation that is exclusive to viviparous beings.
Silent presences watch the visitor in a room transformed into what could be a private bedroom or holy chapel, draped in black, the lighting subdued. Engrossed in a romantic embrace, in the middle of giving birth or living out their twilight years, they seem to be in the grip of a transition. Like a moment frozen in time, Vicerial attempts to capture the transformation paving the way to the (re)birth of these unclassifiable beings, these supernatural nymphs, half-plant, half-animal.
“Our environment abounds in these metamorphoses,” she explains. “My thread turns into a cocoon right in front of my eyes, and a sculpture emerges from it. Everything undergoes transformation.” Alongside them is a wall featuring small “sex-votos” made from a single, ink-coloured thread. For the first time, the artist has inlaid them with nuggets of bronze and fine gold. The objects-as-offerings beg the question, what exactly do they evoke? Female genitals? Insects? Extraterrestrial bodies? These enigmatic creatures highlight a great taboo of society: the fear of the passing time, of change, of decline, vulnerability and death.
Jeanne Vicerial’s work has featured in several group exhibitions, including at the Maximiliansforum, Munich (2022), Fondation Martell, Cognac (2022), Ballroom Project, Antwerp (May 2022), Maison Guerlain, Paris (2022), Musée International des Arts Modestes in Sète (2023), Lafayette Anticipations – Fondation Galeries Lafayette, Paris (2023), FRAC Auvergne (2023), Musée Bargoin, Clermont-Ferrand (2023) and the Nîmes Triennale (2024).
In 2022, she created the sets for Atys, a new version of the tragic opera composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully and inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphosis, directed by Angelin Preljocaj and shown for the first time in France at the Versailles Royal Opera.
In 2023, Jeanne Vicerial made the costumes for Figures by Dalila Belaza at the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale.
Jeanne Vicerial’s first monograph was published in 2023 with a special contribution from philosopher Emanuele Coccia and interview with historian and researcher Ida Soulard.
From 19 June to 7 September 2025 as part of the Le Voyage à Nantes event, Jeanne Vicerial’s work will be presented interacting with a text by French philosopher and writer Claire Marin at Lieu Unique in Nantes.
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The artist
Born in 1991, Jeanne Vicerial lives and works in Paris. Her passion for clothes design began when she was a teenager. After studying costume design then obtaining a master's in clothes design at the Paris École des Arts Décoratifs in 2015, she started a research project which resulted in a Sciences, Arts, Creation and Research PhD. Her thesis, defended in 2019, questions the mechanisms at work in the design of contemporary clothing and proposes an alternative to the made-to-measure/ready-to-wear dichotomy associated with fast-fashion culture. She took her research further by teaming up with the mechatronics department at MINES ParisTech to develop a patented robotised process for producing made-to-measure clothes with no waste. She also chose an artistic path which led her to work with Hussein Chalayan and then found research and design studio Clinique vestimentaire. In addition to producing her own creations, she has quickly established an array of partnerships with artists working in different fields, including photographers, sculptors, performers, choreographers, musicians and perfumers. Jeanne Vicerial was the artist-in-residence at the French Academy in Rome, at Villa Medici, in 2019-2020. Her work has been widely shown, including at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2018), Villa Medici and Palazzo Farnese in Rome (2020) and Collection Lambert in Avignon (2021), and was recently included in the Centre National des Arts Plastiques collection in Paris.
