Elise Nguyen Quoc

Fait par la langue / fait comme un rat

Sitting on my panels spread out on the floor, the movement of my body, from the muscles in my neck to those in my fingers, concentrate all the way to the pointed tip of the ballpoint pen. From these last movements, lines are drawn, arched, forming grooves that follows the length of my arms and marking the rhythms of the passing of time. Each panel is a piece of plowed earth, radically worked. Starting from this idea of action, where time becomes a primary material, my gestures don’t necessarily fall within the realm of art. They may resemble those of a farmer tending to his land or a student copying lines as punishment; they are an extension of everyday gestures, a task to be done, the continuation of normal human activity. Once the entire white surface is filled with signs, I then erase my own gestures to let the image appear. The images I reproduce are remnants, traces, of my own activity or that of others, human or non-human. These are infra-lives, things that exist on the periphery of major subjects, traces left in transitional spaces, things that were never meant to be drawn and address no one; yet they still convey something: there is a potential for language in what appears to have no meaning. When I begin my work of reproduction, I try to stay as close as possible to my image. To do so, I must paradoxically withdraw from myself: attempt to see and know nothing, to capture what drew me in. Attempting to see nothing in my practice of reproduction means committing to treating every small fragment of my image with the same attention. Only by setting aside all emotion and interpretation can one truly encounter otherness, something that represents nothing to us. Adopting the role of a copyist means following a precise protocol, an ethical practice to which I adhere. In this submission to the protocol, and as mechanical as my work may seem, it is never simply a matter of execution. Every technical gesture is a response to a question posed by the material. This process of reproducing images has, in turn, left behind remnants and scraps that point to and initiate a form of inscription that does not rely on images, which forms the focus of this exhibition. Placed at a height above my formats, I sketch in the air a gesture that simulates writing. The acrylic traces settle on the surface, dry, and turn into markers: a kind of braille, where my hand retraces the path and inscribes them with small lines from a ballpoint pen. I trace like a primitive blind termite depositing material. In the same way that the character Petit Poucet leaves pebbles on the ground to find her way back home, each termite collects a bit of earth, turns it into a small ball, incorporates pheromones, then deposits it somewhere on the ground. Because termites are attracted by smell, literally, they sense the material, and another termite will likely deposit its own small ball of earth next to the other. From this simple biological mechanism, following a repetitive yet subtly different behavior with each gesture, complex structures. It is the construction of a cathedral, made up of blind workers, without a head architect, being built quietly.