Prune Nourry

Prune Nourry takes a humanistic approach to her work, encouraging viewers to simply reflect on our shared future. Her work is a subtle combination of existential questioning, scientific debates, the power of the sacred and the issues in contemporary society. Prune Nourry’s work is a combination of sculpture, installation, performance and video. She collaborates with artisans, works with a wide range of materials and explores new techniques. The works she produces are mainly site-specific large-scale productions, which she destroys, buries or stages in rituals documented using photography and video.

At the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire, she is exhibiting two bronze sculptures she created in 2021 for the Attis Baroque opera-ballet created by Lully (1676), directed and choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj. Attis is a mythological character from The Metamorphoses by the poet Ovid. According to Ovid, he transformed himself into a pine tree after resisting the love of goddess Cybele. The two sculptures represent the key moment in the story when the main character turns into a tree, perfectly illustrating the concept of hybridisation that is so dear to the artist.

There are no combinations that this artist who plays with symbols, keywords and associated ideas deprives herself of. In one single approach, Prune Nourry does not hesitate in referring to cord as a material, vocal chords and string theory (in French la théorie des cordes), to create a world where everything interacts as one. In the Historic Grounds, the anthropomorphic trees seem to dance and perform as if they were on stage. “We are all instruments that vibrate, you just have to be willing to listen,” concludes the artist.