Paola Siri Renard’s sculptures are micro-architectures through which any individual can reclaim imperceptible architectural, cultural and normative realities via bodily experiments. Enlightened as much as distorted, they reveal formal grids and political structures which shape spaces and condition social interactions insidiously.
The transcription process isolates and rescales generic ornaments, bestowing upon them an autonomy that is stripped from any context. They acquire their own (dys)functionality. The anachronistic symbolism creates interfaces that undermine Western architectural orders. Paola Siri Renard reveals normative aesthetic codes spreading throughout centuries, in parallel with injunctions that neglect bodies ; echoing the history of her Martinican and Swedish roots.
Natural processes such as sloughing or fossilization interact with immutable ornamental layers, conferring upon them an aura of mutation. Emanating from this encounter, the metamorphic shapes of her test-instruments suggest imaginary displacement engines. Physical reappropriations of these besieging architectural growths question the treatment of designed heritage through the correlation between its circulation and the exclusion of specific identities.
