Studio visit: Elodie Antoine

There is a softness to Elodie Antoine’s work. The softness of velvet, of felt, of wool. But there is also, at the same time, uncontrollable proliferation, heavy-metal pollution, and invasive mutations. For we are all both “the best and the worst”.

The deal is simple, but somebody had to think of it. De Brusselse Haard/Le Foyer Bruxellois provided, free of charge, unoccupied spaces within the social housing schemes it runs; and, in exchange, Elodie Antoine and three other artists run projects designed to improve social cohesion, in cooperation with the residents, both children and adults. So, in a block near Anneessens, she now occupies two studios, one above the other, too run-down to be really inhabitable, but suitable enough for the work of a studio. She only moved in a few weeks ago – previously, operating according to the same principle, she had her studio in a social housing project in the Marollen/Marolles district – but the place is already well filled and shows the stamp of her work. Scattered on the table, beside a box of bobbins, are drawings of oil rigs, dotted at regular intervals with the needle holes that served as the basis for her pieces of lace. On the walls, you can see the results: a series of nuclear power plant cooling towers, patiently created using black threads, which are densely interwoven at the top, like smoke. Or pubic hair.

Lacemaking is one of the textile techniques that Elodie Antoine, originally from Arlon, learned in parallel with her sculpture course at La Cambre, from where she graduated in 2003. “I became interested in textiles early on in my artistic career, because they had been very much present in my family. Everyone in my house knows how to sew, both my mother and my father – it was my father who taught me how to knit – and my two grandmothers too. I can’t even remember when it was that I started using a sewing machine. Often I have an idea and the technical skill is placed at the service of the idea. But sometimes I learn a technique because I like it and the idea comes out of the constraints associated with it. That’s what happened with lacemaking. I thought about subjects that might work with that technique and I chose elements of the industrial world that are very finely wrought and could have something in common with lace, visually. What interested me was the clash, the contradiction between a technique that is seen as feminine, fragile, and miniature and a gigantic, solid subject in a rather masculine world.”

“Contradiction” is a key term. Elodie Antoine’s work teems with contradictions: between attraction and repulsion, between prettiness and menace, between what is tender and what is disturbing. Like those forms in felt, which are soft, suggesting severed mutant organs. Or like that rib cage made of zips, or those cloth mushrooms, parasitic excrescences that colonise the branches of trees, or like that bondage wrapover top in pink wool... “I often work with materials that are quite nice, beautiful, or sensual, but that are used for subjects that are a bit ‘borderline’. There will be just as many people who will find it pretty as will find it revolting – and for me, that’s fine. I actually try to stay on the edge in that way. If it becomes disgusting, it has failed; and if it becomes decorative, that’s a failure too. It has to be both, to be interesting to me. In that tension, there are questions about the complexity of the world. About the fact that we are all both the best and the worst.”

Downstairs are stored some wigs, with sophisticated hairstyles created in hemp – combining the off-yellow, rugged aspect of the material with cute little knotted ribbons. “My daughter is four; she loves princesses and I think that had a lot to do with the inspiration for those sculptures. It’s funny, because before I had children, everyone used to say to me, ‘Your work is so sexual! You are completely obsessed with sex!’ And when I became a mother, everyone said, ‘Your work is so much about maternity!’ Whereas, in fact, I think myself that nothing has changed. What has changed with the children is my organisation. As an artist, you have to discipline yourself on your own. Sometimes, when you don’t believe in it, when there is no sacred flame, it is very difficult to go to the studio. Now, I am systematically in my studio when my children are at school and for me that’s very structuring. Then, inevitably, ideas develop out of my life with them. They are very imaginative and creative. They don’t have any barriers: they haven’t been conditioned. When you have children, you are in direct contact with your own childhood and it’s very beneficial for the work.”

Borough: Brussel/Bruxelles
Current shows: "A Book Between Two Stools" (group show), > 7/9, Villa Empain, www.villaempain.com; Triennale Art Public Tournai (group show): 4/4 > 20/6; "Black Sheep: The Darker Side of Felt" (group show): > 11/5, The National Centre for Craft & Design, Sleaford, UK, www.nationalcraftanddesign.org.uk
In the near future: group show at White House Gallery: from 31/5, Lovenjoel; solo show at Aeroplastics Contemporary: end of 2014, www.aeroplastics.net
Info: www.elodieantoine.be

Photos © Heleen Rodiers