Inspired by myths, the history of representation, and the collective imagination surrounding animals and plants, Clara Montrieul’s work invites us to reflect on the cultural constructs that condition our perception of living things.
The starting point for Les Effleurées is a reflection on the omnipresence of flowers as symbols in classical painting. Extracted from their original canvases and stripped of their symbolic function, flowers appear as characters in their own right.
The 3 flowers, staged and photographed in the studio, parody the projections they provoke despite themselves. Mimicking genitalia in a caricatured way, enlarged and rendered in a strange sharpness thanks to photography, they force us to look at them differently, beyond the projections.
With Coco & Alejandro, the artist humorously evokes the possibility of animal eroticism.

Clara Montrieul was born in Nogent-sur-Marne in 1994. She is a graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles.

She lives and works in Paris.