Gabrielle Chardigny
- 21 hours ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
Gabrielle Chardigny is an installation artist who has exhibited in Germany, France, and Portugal. She has been awarded the Kunst Prize and participated in the Montemero Art Residency. Gabrielle describes her interests “in how natural resources and living organisms are extracted,
displaced, and maintained within human-made systems. Industrial and synthetic materials
are used not only as a contrast to natural elements, but as infrastructures that organize and
condition their existence”.
The portfolio of Gabrielle Chardigny mostly consists of plants and various forms of foliage encased in greenhouse-like constructions of tarp. In these structures, there is an overt commentary on human impact and the relevance of ecology. The wrapped plants are barely visible within the structures, often appearing as a blur or shadow from the opaque tarp, such a presentation indicates a sense of confinement and entrapment. Gabrielle also uses salt deposits on textiles drenched in water to emanate a corrosive effect which seems like a social commentary on the impact of erosion on eco-systems. Often appearing as tunnels or hexagonal tubes, the various installations involving plants portray a conveyance of cynicism to humanity’s relationship with nature. In a way, these works may come off as a criticism to current sustainable practices and ecology as to whether they are efficient or even impactful enough to create a meaningful difference on fragile eco-systems. These interpretations may be intentional or not, but the portrayal of plants encased in carefully constructed structure-systems communicates a way of either returning the foliage into the earth or isolating them from human interaction, as if to shield them from human impact within the confines of imposed and overwhelming civilizational expansion.
Recently, Gabrielle Chardigny’s installations have taken a turn towards the celestial with otherworldly attributes, such as Is there Gold on the Moon?. Confined to interiors shaped by red clay to simulate the surface of Mars or a similar planet, the plants are encased in futuristic-appearing oval structures. As if these configurations were sleeping pods or transport vessels to ship the plants to another world within a spaceship. The plants are treated as scientific specimens to be isolated and protected, invoking their scarcity and intrinsic value amongst the desolate wasteland of the Mars lunar surface. In a similar manner, the works with salt deposits in works such as Las Salinas portrays custom aquariums of salt-water, with the minerals becoming absorbed by clay and fabric. These surfaces create a rustic effect as if the artwork experienced a sudden time-lapse of erosion.
Dupeyron (pictured above) displays a rare scene within Gabrielle Chardigny’s portfolio where foliage is actually exposed through her installation. Not in the installation within, but rather the surrounding environment which appears to be a garden or complex overtaken by vines. This dichotomy between free-ranging plants and the ones confined within the installation reveals the differential systems between freedom of movement and entrapment affected by human impact.
Investigative and reflective, these ecological structures by Gabrielle Chardigny are a social commentary on sustainment and how constructed systems interact with nature, such as deforestation or an expanding city encroaching on a habitat-rich forest. The sense of cynism becomes evident in choosing not to reveal the plants clearly to the spectator and encasing them within trapping mechanisms, which do not harm but reflect conceptual conveyance in transformation within confined spaces and controlled systems.
