Maud Gourdon presents the exhibition Cataplasme at CENTRALE | box (24.11.2022 > 19.03.2023). The artist questions the notions of “repair” and “decoration” and explores through them our relationship to the feminine, to health and to the mystical.

Maud Gourdon’s artistic practice is particularly interested in disciplines identified as feminine, passive and minor, such as decoration and ornamentation, hobby and craft, alternative medicine and mysticism. She questions how the aesthetics they produce can become an element of subversion, an opposition to dominant cultural constructions.

The new body of work presented in the exhibition stems from Maud Gourdon’s experiments with the cataplasm, also known as a plaster: a pasty remedy made from clay, plants or flours, which the artist uses as a sculptural and ornamental material.
Nowadays being relegated to the category of “grandmother’s” remedies, the cataplasm is regarded by the artist as related to the mother figure and to the knowledge that is traditionally passed on from mother to daughter: manual work, cooking, sewing, interior decoration, remedies, etc.

A series of sculptures made with the materials of cataplasms are placed around the exhibition space. To produce them, the artist has developed a mixture of medicinal clay and plant fibres, which is then placed and compressed in carved wooden moulds. This paste then becomes the material and support for a series of coloured motifs, between abstraction and figuration, between mash and ornament.

The installation is completed by two sculptures placed on the floor. They consist of a combination of words and numbers inserted into a black and white pattern representing knitted fabrics. Placed inside this ornament, as if framed, these words suddenly acquire strength and intensity. With this the artist humorously questions some aspects of language: the poetic, the decorative but also the curative aspect of it.

With the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation