Kathy Le Vavasseur - sculptor
- 15 hours ago
- 4 min read
Today I present to you visual artist Kathy Le Vavasseur, whom I met via LinkedIn and with whom I had the pleasure of a rich telephone conversation. Between her story, the art world, production and artistic need, Kathy opens up with her guts and her heart, and I sense all the importance of her creation, in which we can detect an interesting evolution.
Kathy was born in Sa Đéc, Vietnam, where politics pushed her and her family to leave. Her father, a sculptor, designer, and of Italian origin, introduced her to art from a very young age since she was accustomed to spending hours in his studio. As far back as she can remember, and more precisely at age four, Kathy proclaimed her desire to be an artist, she tells me. From this memory emerges one where she danced in her father's studio, she continues. First, she was drawn to dance, fascinated by its movements. In Vietnam, there are no dance schools and she had to abandon the idea of starting down that path. From these dance movements linked to her memories, Kathy would transpose them into her sculptures and volumes, some years later. The frustration of not being able to dance led her to develop matter in an animated and living way. When we look at her work, we have this impression that everything is swirling. Kathy works the materials herself. This is of capital importance, she tells me. The act of physically taking the material and giving it life makes her rediscover sensations experienced in the past. A journey through time through an artistic conception in which matter takes form.
From her family, Kathy was hardly encouraged and she was pushed to pursue other professions in which she never found herself, she continues. Because the "vital impulse," as she calls it, was not present in these. An awakening then occurred and Kathy stopped evolving in what did not allow her to flourish. She therefore decided to resume art studies and stop disappearing behind other structures with which she did not identify. She took the initiative to submit her application to an artistic competition and it worked. She immediately felt more confident and anchored in her profession as an artist, finally feeling alive. This "vital impulse" takes on meaning and embeds her in her history, her environment. Deeply marked by the Ganges and the Mekong, as well as by her family stories, she focuses her artistic production on vital elements such as viscera, flesh, but also skin itself. With these elements, Kathy constantly evokes rebirth, which becomes an important concept in her creation. She questions the notion of identity, being herself uprooted. Thus, her creation takes an interesting turn with macro compositions. Indeed, Kathy uses X-rays of her body, or of unknown people, to transpose them by linking them to translucent glass jets that she spins in the depths of her studio. Thanks to this glass technique, Kathy shows what is the invisible part of being, to our eyes. She uses symbols borrowed from science such as neuron, genesis, or translocation. Fluidity is also a symbol she uses in her works, playing with notions of balance and matter. This way of developing her work makes the structures elastic and airy. The agitation of the Ganges represented by the mesh of tights like an elaborate and animated veil is an example. The forms are composed in an elaborate manner in the way that suits her. She does not take into account the aesthetic aspect of the work. She rather searches for what it can express through her techniques. The subjects, fragments, series, but quite simply the form, are an integral part of this abundant production. The latter also includes earth, which occupies an important place and whose meanings are heavy with significance. It is the link between air and water that allows her to use the "Nerikomi" technique—an artistic technique for creating Japanese pottery in multiple colors of clay—to show the various layers of individuality and recreate again the paradox of fluidity, of a certain anchoring to earth, but also the movement that never ceases to be present. From this research, "Les Mues" (The Molts) was born in April 2020, during lockdown, which she conceived for various installations. On scraps of tights, Kathy pours translucent and colored paint. This technique is her own and she has been using it for many years. This process then gives way to a sensation of thin, reptilian skins that appear both fragile and robust. Movement then comes to intermingle between the molts that stir and intertwine with each other, suggesting that a carnal connection is revealed. Suspended and in motion, the molts are frozen at the moment of their fall. The notion of identity but also of intimacy questions her entire process. The shedding of skin is slow and gradual and includes a transition or rupture with what we were before. We must know how to accept changes that are part of life, and we can read in them a mark of time running by, as if constantly in motion. Just like Kathy's artistic work, which moves in space and whose evolution calls for the abandonment of a state. In essence, Kathy recreates the changes experienced in her life in order to understand their mechanisms. We can also see in it a way of accepting what we cannot control. Like time, her works transform, molt, to make way for a new form of creativity that constantly involves these notions of identity and intimacy. Because, as I have often said, an artist cannot disregard their own life when creating. It accompanies them. Kathy highlights this truth that shows us all the openness and possibilities that her art possesses, and that it remains forever a "vital impulse."
Author: Marie Bagi, Director of MAF & PhD in Contemporary Art History and Philosophy
April 11, 2022
