Tatiana Trouvé

Ricard Foundation Prize presentation
in the Centre Pompidou

Polder 2001 by Tatiana Trouvé is an installation whose various aspects are open to different perceptions. The Polders are part of the Implicit Activities Bureau, a work in expansion that grows continuously to be reproduced in modules, filing and observation places that the artist has kept building since 1977. Similar to the polders - lands stolen from the sea, dried up and developed - this work represents what was always there, waiting to be retrieved and reorganized. The Polders are complex architectures designed for rehabilitation, structured micro-societies, without any specific finality, meant to integrate the architecture of a given place. The Polders adapt and modify themselves according to the place they settle in, they fill abandoned nooks and crannies and participate in the reorganisation of the environment, carrying out a certain number of transformations.
Displayed around partitions, Polder 2001 is made of different elements, whose surface are carefully equipped (Bench, tables with monitors, radios and cameras) linked between them by electrical cables, similar to threads illustrating memory lanes, reminiscent of a reduction of space to its mental interpretation. The work of Tatiana Trouvé organizes itself according to the principles of filing, assembling and reproduction, aiming at preserving a future rather than resigning themselves to loss. The work is always liable to be modified, as it is mostly a territory open to the multiple orientations and directions of the possible. The strategic aspect of these operations balances between the meticulous construction and the imaginary functioning. Tatiana Trouvé sets in motion a creative process at the service of the work.

Tatiana Trouvé, "Polder 2001", 2001, courtesy of the artist.