Meeting with Marie Preston
During my studies at the fine arts school, I worked for three years alongside Malian women in an association in Montreuil. I knitted while they sewed boubous. Then I filmed ritual drawings made by women on the thresholds of houses in southern India. Since then, I have constantly moved around to better understand the world we live in.
On est le fil rouge, Coton, lin et chanvre, 400 x 160 cm. Marie Preston avec Claudine Alberti, Nicole Blanc, Colette Copin, Simone Garzo, Justa Lopez et Léonore de Saint Gerand. Photo : Gaëlle Cognée
“During my studies at the fine arts school, I worked for three years alongside Malian women in an association in Montreuil. I knitted while they sewed boubous. Then I filmed ritual drawings made by women on the thresholds of houses in southern India. Since then, I have constantly moved around to better understand the world we live in. The encounters and works created alongside or with people from other cultures led me to seek answers in ethnography, to study its colonial foundations and the deconstruction of its methods to move towards a dialogic and relational aesthetic. I became interested in the transformations of agricultural practices by colonization, shared gardens, and the disappearance of market gardening lands in Seine-Saint-Denis. Then, in the Tulle region, I met people driven by a desire for energy autonomy, guided by an approach similar to that of the potters of La Borne, a village surrounded by forests built on a vein of clay where I was in residence. Then, I learned to bake bread. The co-educational dimension of cooperative or co-creation artistic practices is central to my research. Finally, while postcolonial epistemologies helped me think about modes of relationship, the use of feminist thought gradually became more prominent. The representation of women, the place of women’s voices in public space, and the role of women in the subsistence economy have been central themes throughout these years.”
Conference as part of the ARC Des terres. Marie Preston is invited by Vanessa Desclaux.
The Speaker
Marie Preston is an artist and associate professor at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (TEAMeD / AIAC Laboratory). Her artistic work is a form of research aimed at creating works, experience documents, with people who are not artists by default. In recent years, her research has focused on bread-making practices, open schools, libertarian and institutional pedagogies, and women’s professions in care and early childhood. She recently participated in the exhibitions Cum Panis at 19 CRAC in Montbéliard (2024), 40 years of Frac! Gunaikeîon, Réserves (2024), The Land of the Future, MMOMA, Moscow (2023), The Art of Learning. A School of Creators, Centre Pompidou Metz (2022). She co-directed with Céline Poulin and in collaboration with Stéphanie Airaud the book Co-Creation (Éditions Empire and CAC Brétigny) in 2019 and published Inventing the School, Thinking Co-Creation (Tombolo Presses and CAC Brétigny – reprint 2023) in 2021.
Practical information
Free conference, open to everyone.
External visitors: Reservation required using this form.
