Maya Rochat — Poetry of the Earth
The MEP presents the first large scale institutional exhibition in France by Swiss artist, Maya Rochat. A remarkable experimental photographer, Rochat has developed a unique formal language cutting across several disciplines : photography, painting, video, installation and performance.
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Give Me Space (Magic Cave), 2016 © Maya Rochat Courtesy de l’artiste -
A Rock is a River (Meta Tree), 2017 © Maya Rochat Courtesy de l’artiste -
Cameleon Stones, 2020 © Maya Rochat Courtesy de l'artiste -
A Rock is a River (Meta Rainbow), 2018 © Maya Rochat Courtesy de l’artiste -
Ma tête à couper (Palma River), 2012 © Maya Rochat - Courtesy de l’artiste
The exhibition
Maya Rochat creates visual montages in highly saturated colours combining natural motifs and abstract painting. Her photographs of plants, rocks and rivers provide a basis for her experimentation. She layers images, digitally or physically altering them and amplifying their use and meaning by playing with transparency, texture and colour. From artists’ books and prints to light boxes, her multimedia works also extend beyond the frame into the surrounding space in the form of immersive installations and video projections.
Inspired by nature in its varying forms and scales, Maya Rochat engages in a poetic reflection on the beauty of the world around us, its substance and transformation. She also examines the place that humans occupy within it by evoking pollution – chemical, as well as visual – through the endless flow of digital images. The artist invites visitors to enter her dreamlike universe that offers an appreciable alternative to representations of a world in crisis, which she seeks to enchant anew.
The exhibition traces 12 years of Maya Rochat’s artistic career, from her first works of the 2010s to her most recent project, “Poetry of the Earth” (2022). She leads us on a visual and sensorial journey through her transdisciplinary work, in which the photographic image and video take centre stage.
Curator : Victoria Aresheva
Image en une : Maya Rochat, A Rock is , 2020 Courtesy of the header
The artist
Born in 1985, Maya Rochat is a graduate of the University of Art and Design Lausanne (ECAL) and the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD). Her work has been presented in major cultural institutions, including KKL in Lucerne, Switzerland (2022), Musée Jenisch in Vevey, Switzerland (2022), Foam in Amsterdam (2021), Tate Modern in London (2017), Les Abattoirs museum in Toulouse (2017), Kunsthaus Langenthal, Switzerland (2017), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2016), Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva (2015), and Fotomuseum Winterthur (2012).
The artist has also received several awards, including the AMP Prize (2022), the Prix Mobilière (2019), the Pro Helvetia Prix de la relève photographique (2015), and cultural grants from Fondation Leenaards (2018 and 2017) and Fondation Abraham Hermanjat (2017).
She has published several artists’ books, including Living in a Painting (2019), A Rock is a River (2017), Crystal Clear (2015) published by Edition Patrick Frey, A plastic tool (2014) and Vote for me! (2012) published by Hard copy and work.master.
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