MARGUERITE HUMEAU

Marguerite Humeau’s work stages the crossing of great distances in time and space, transitions between animal and mineral, and encounters between personal desires and natural forces. The work explores the possibility of communication between worlds and the means by which knowledge is generated in the absence of evidence or through the impossibility of reaching the object of investigation.

Marguerite Humeau weaves factual events into speculative narratives, therefore enabling unknown, invisible, or extinct forms of life to erupt in grandiose splendour. Combining prehistory, occult biology and science fiction in a disconcerting spectacle – the works resuscitate the past, conflate subterranean and subcutaneous, all the while updating the quest genre for the information age.

Here, Queen of Leopards is looking through the window, as if meditating. She is the hybrid of a Manatee brain known to have the most powerful long-term memory on the planet, and of the “Dame aux Fauves” (Lady of Leopards) found in Çatalhöyük, dating back from 6000BC. She seems to be recalling immemorial times and forthcoming events; stories of death on a small and global scale.

Marguerite Humeau studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven and at the Royal College of Art, London, where she obtained her MA in Design Interactions in 2011. Her work has been shown in various solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums including Tate Britain (London), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Nottingham Contemporary, Château de Versailles, Haus Konstruktiv (Zürich), the High Line (New York), Manifesta11 (Zürich), Schinkel Pavillon (Berlin), TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienna), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Hayward Gallery (Touring Programme). She was awarded the Zürich Art Prize 2017. She is visiting tutor at Open School East (Margate) and HEAD–Genève.