frĂŠdĂŠrique de Montblanc www.frederiquedemontblanc.com
BIOGRAPHY Born and raised in Brussels, Frédérique de Montblanc received a BFA in Theatre at Concordia University in Montreal in 2004. She then completed her MFA in Design & Production from the California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles in 2007.
www.frederiquedemontblanc.com www.vimeo.com/user6931259 f_demontblanc@yahoo.fr + 32 (0) 470 35 43 34
Both scenographer and visual artist, her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles (Outpost Gallery for Contemporary Art, Highways Performance Space, BetaLevel Gallery, CalArts), Houston (Lawndale Art Center, Artstorm Gallery, Slab in Temporary Space, Nance Street Studios) and Brussels (Nadine, Vasthouse, BAF, Art Asylum). Her set design work includes Firebird and Titus Andronicus with the Dominic Walsh Dance Theatre Company based in Houston, TX. More recently, she designed I Would Prefer Not To by Selma Alaoui (Theatre les Tanneurs, Brussels) for which she was nominated for best scenography at the Belgian ‘Prix de la Critique 201’. She also created sets and costumes for Les Buveuses de Cafe by Compagnie Mossoux-Bonte (Theatre Romain Rolland, Paris | Internationales Figurentheater, Erlangen | Theatre des Brigittines, Brussels). She currently lives and works in Brussels.
Couverture: © Noemie Nicolas, Tarentula loves you Sweetheart Mise en page: Squarefish.be
STATEMENT The predominant subject of my work explores codes of behaviour and etiquette. More particularly, I examine the multiple facets of femininity when constrained to these specific codes. Strongly informed by contemporary dance and an ongoing working experience in set design, space and body are key components to my work. Whether the body is photographed, drawn, collaged or captured with video, it is always choreographed to respond to a given scenography. The female body becomes a means of subversion often within interior spaces: whether opulent or raw, bourgeois or minimalistic, they remain intimate. I ironize the ambiguities surrounding the concept of ‘normal’ or ‘expected’ femininity within society. Women are staged in such a way that they both embody their expected feminine attributes and sabotage their own image.
TARENTULA LOVES YOU SWEATHEART / performance / Tarentula loves you Sweetheart / 2011 / illustrations / Stay at Home Gorillas / 2010
The performance piece Tarentula Loves you Sweetheart was based on the ink drawing series Stay at Home Gorillas. I transposed these strong yet somehow passive subjects into body and space. Audience members were invited to participate in an innovative erotic game where each one had five minutes in a personal booth to draw hair on a woman’s bare legs. The female body was staged to become both a sublimated entity and a tender playground.
LA CHAMBRE GARNIE
/ installation / La Chambre Garnie
/ installation / La Chambre Garnie / 2011-10 / video / La Salle a Manger / 2010
La Chambre Garnie is an installation piece in which I recycled trimmings, silks and vintage advertisements from a Parisian interior decoration company closing a showroom in Brussels. I subtly inserted myself into the pictures by reproducing the lighting situation of the original photoshoots. Both La Chambre Garnie and the video piece La Salle a Manger (The Dining Room) use a bourgeois backdrop to humorously stage a surrealistic feminine fantasy.
/ video / La Salle a Manger
LA CAVE / video / La Cave / 2010
Both dance theatre and a cinematographic essay, La Cave (The Cellar) questions the way we build our fantasies in relation to our everyday life. Centered around a washing machine, a couple appears to discover themselves for the first time. The body transforms itself into a dream-like landscape and becomes the passage of one reality into another. The day-today is replaced by an ambiguous mixture of dream, experience and absence that reminds us that ethereal love can still remain in the clockwork of a couple. This video piece was recently streamed on ARTE creative.
AUF DEUTSCH, PLEASE! / installation, video / Auf Deutsch Please / 2010
Auf Deutch, Please! is a video created in collaboration with Charlotte Dupont in the context of Dominokingdom, an artistic endeavor of Adva Zakai and Miriam Rohde in residency at Nadine (Contemporary Art Center, Brussels). The piece was based on ‘The Rationalists’, a text by Bill Aitchinson and dispatched on various levels of the Nadine headquarters as a looped installation.