For this eleventh title in the Digressions series, Baptiste Brévart and Guillaume Ettlinger discuss with Julie Sicault Maillé their artistic practice as a duo and their installation La vallée aux 120 volcans (The Valley of 120 Volcanoes) for the exhibition Atterir - La terre au centre.
Here Baptiste Brévart and Guillaume Ettlinger put into perspective the history of Noisiel and La Ferme du Buisson, formerly the property of the Menier family, and Valle-Menier, the family's 1862 cocoa plantation in Nicaragua, near the Mombacho volcano. This conversation takes place during a walk through Noisiel in July 2021, which is also an opportunity to take a look at an urban landscape; in a third, hitherto unpublished segment Brévart and Ettlinger cite quotations from artists from previous editions of the Digressions booklets, which echo their own work.
Julie Sicault Maillé (born 1976, lives in Paris) is associate curator at La Ferme du Buisson Centre for Contemporary Art. Her exhibitions, among them Aterrir (2021) and Le Palais des villes imaginaires (2022), place particular emphasis on language and territory.
Baptiste Brévart (born 1982, lives in Hanover) and Guillaume Ettlinger (born 1987, lives in Paris) focus on the way narratives influence the world and its landscapes. In sequences combining documentary and fiction, forms and objects function as narrative tools.
Among exhibitions which can be mentionned: Atterir – La terre au centre / Centre d'art contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, in 2021-2022; MdCdM – Musée des Collections du Monde, saison 2 (Museum of World Collections, Season 2), at Domaine départemental de Chamarande in 2020; MdCdM – Musée des Collections du Monde, saison 1 (Museum of World Collections, Season 1) at Franciades in Massy, 2019; Carbet Chelou in Camopi / Guyana in 2017, Ateliers Médicis.
They have published Wednesdays at A's, 330 Broome St. NY 1979-1981 with Pauline Chevalier and Guillaume Loisillon, Anamosa editions. Since 2017 they have self-published the Cheptel magazine.
