Laure Julien interweaves plant, metal and leather to create forms that all draw curves in space, and themselves define spaces, whether intimate or inviting to a shared choreography.

Based on fluidity, her work, a cross between design and sculpture, is extremely light, but traces lines of force that split the air.

She harvests raw materials, from bamboo fiber, the power and potential of which she discovered during her apprenticeship in basketry with Japanese masters, to esparto, tamed by the happy companionship of artisans in Spain.

Her hand weaves the vegetal, imprinting the time it takes to make it, a singular breath of air and her own swirling energy, as well as her meticulousness, so that the thin strips of bamboo assembled in warp and weft, combining suppleness and rigidity, become the structure around which the hanks of rushes unfurl, replaying their oscillations in the wind.

Laure Julien’s work focuses on the movements of nature, and particularly of bodies, from the bullfighter’s cape to everyday objects, that are manipulated and animated in turn, creating landscape-objects, ornaments or garments that are both mobile and sculptural, always inviting us to join in their wild yet delicate dance.

Text by Aurélie Barnier, curator and art critic, member of AICA