Lou Masduraud

Graduate from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and the Haute école d’Art et de Design in Geneva, Lou Masduraud is engaged in a contextual and feminist artistic practice. Her work explores the spaces and practices of collective life, as well as the systems that underline them, through figurative sculptures and site-specific installations. Sometimes using a formal language borrowed from the grotesque, she sheds light on the formal and informal networks that animate our urban environments, particularly interested in the hidden mechanisms that govern our daily lives. Streetlights, air vents, and mailboxes then become symbols of this exploration, revealing invisible interstices where the systems and architectures we depend on nestle. Her work Active Substances Fountain is part of a series of installations inspired by urban hydraulic technologies such as fountains and washhouses. Seeds of griffonia, recommended for sleep disorders, are placed on the fountain, and at times, the artwork releases a mist of St. John’s Wort flowers with antidepressant properties into the exhibition space, thus questioning the underlying mechanisms of our culture of well-being and performance at any cost, and raising questions about the social pressures that weigh on our bodies. In parallel, the series Plan d’évasion explores the basement louvers in residential buildings, questioning these openings in our complex relationship between domesticity and interiority and the social mechanisms that shape our lives, while opening up alternative imaginary spaces where dominant realities are overturned.