Marion Gronier & Gosette Lubondo

From 8 September to 31 December 2022, the Château d'Eau Gallery presents two works by women from two different generations and two cultures who both reflect on the question of memory and identity: Gosette Lubondo on her country, the Congo, and Marion Gronier on the United States. Two ways of approaching, in different ways, these questions that resonate with each other.

Questioning identity, deciphering the combination of layers that make it up, also means questioning the nature and function of the way we look at it.
From France, Marion Gronier examines the situation of marginalized and abused populations in the United States. In her own country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gosette Lubondo recreates in a poetic and disturbing way the memories of her country's history, from the colonial period to President Mobutu's palace in the jungle. A look from the inside, a look from the outside, radically different plastic proposals come together in a way that affirms the need to know and assume history. It is also a way of getting to know ourselves better.

Christian Caujolle, Artistic Advisor

Born in 1976, Marion Gronier, who studied literature, has been developing a clearly documentary approach to the world for years. Her series "We Were Never Meant to Survive" (Nous n'étaient pas censées survivre) is perfectly in keeping with the "documentary style" through its frontality and the repetition of the framing and the shooting device. Native Americans from Arizona, New Mexico and Montana, African-Americans photographed in New Orleans and Louisiana, Mennonites from Pennsylvania look us straight in the eye. They represent the 'original' communities of the United States, the Indians who were massacred, the slaves of African origin, the Anabaptist and Protestant immigrants who were the first European immigrants. All of them, our contemporaries who seem locked in a temporality that is no longer ours, have become victims. Varying the backgrounds that allow her subtle colour variations, Marion Gronier lets these men, women and children express themselves silently just by their presence, both dignified and bruised, fragile and painful.
In this series, Marion was inspired by the lines of Audre Lorde's poem "A litany for Survival".

Christian Caujolle, Artistic Advisor

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