Tania Mouraud distanced herself from the highly cultivated environment she grew up in at a very early age. Upon completing her studies at Saint Martin’s School in Solihull at the age of 17, she remained in London and worked as an au pair. She then spent time in Germany, in Düsseldorf, where she made a living from odd jobs, including factory work. She then became acquainted with the contemporary art world and attended performances by Joseph Beuys. In 1963, she began her regular artistic production, featuring performances with social and political connotations, and especially, her first paintings. Yet, she felt the need to incorporate a third element. In 1969, during a public burning performance, she set all of her paintings on fire. She then took a radical shift towards minimalism, confirmed by environments she called “initiation rooms”. The first, One More Night (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1969-1970), provided a “psychosensory understanding of space”, enhanced by electroacoustic soundscapes. These spaces, displaying a minimalist design, can be interpreted, in retrospect, as airlocks enabling the transition between the past and the present: the time of experience itself. They act as a sort of rite of passage, as if through them, the artist was reflecting on the direction of her work. They are also intended as “deconditioning” spaces, an important aspect of her work. The artist questions perception and communication, particularly with respect to their relationship with the unspoken: the unspoken in art history, such as, for example, when it comes to reminding us of the existence of the forgotten women artists of the Russian avant-garde, whose names confront those of illustrious men whose names have already been consecrated by history. In 2006, she presented a video installation assembled from films she made of 100 workers in Kerala, India, operating looms or spinning wheels. Her political commitment thus ties her artistic practice to the reality of the world that we must confront responsibly.
Raphaël CUIR
See this illustrated text on the website of the Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions
