frédérique de Montblancwww.frederiquedemontblanc.com

Born and raised in Brussels, Frédérique de Montblanc received a BFA in Theatre at Concordia University in Montreal in 2004. She then completed her MFA in De-sign & Production from the California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles in 2007.

Both scenographer and visual artist, her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles (Outpost Gallery for Contempo-rary Art, Highways Performance Space, BetaLevel Gal-lery, CalArts), Houston (Lawndale Art Center, Artstorm Gallery, Slab in Temporary Space, Nance Street Studios) and Brussels (Nadine, Vasthouse, BAF, Art Asylum).

Her set design work includes Firebird and Titus Andronicus with the Dominic Walsh Dance Theatre Company based in Houston, TX. More recently, she designed I Would Prefer Not To by Selma Alaoui (Theatre les Tanneurs, Brussels) for which she was nominated for best sceno-graphy at the Belgian ‘Prix de la Critique 201’. She also created sets and costumes for Les Buveuses de Cafe by Com-pagnie Mossoux-Bonte (Theatre Romain Rolland, Paris | Internationales Figurentheater, Erlangen | Theatre des Brigittines, Brussels).

She currently lives and works in Brussels.

BIOGRAPHY

www.frederiquedemontblanc.comwww.vimeo.com/user6931259

f_demontblanc@yahoo.fr+ 32 (0) 470 35 43 34

Couverture: © Noemie Nicolas, Tarentula loves you SweetheartMise en page: Squarefish.be

STATEMENT

The predominant subject of my work explores codes of behaviour and etiquette. More particularly, I exa-mine the multiple facets of femininity when constrai-ned to these specific codes.

Strongly informed by contemporary dance and an ongoing working experience in set design, space and body are key components to my work. Whether the body is photographed, drawn, collaged or captured with video, it is always choreographed to respond to a given scenography. The female body becomes a means of subversion often within interior spaces: whether opulent or raw, bourgeois or minimalistic, they remain intimate.

I ironize the ambiguities surrounding the concept of ‘normal’ or ‘expected’ femininity within society. Wo-men are staged in such a way that they both embody their expected feminine attributes and sabotage their own image.

/ performance / Tarentula loves you Sweetheart / 2011 / illustrations / Stay at Home Gorillas / 2010

The performance piece Tarentula Loves you Sweetheart was based on the ink drawing series Stay at Home Gorillas. I transposed these strong yet somehow passive subjects into body and space. Audience members were invited to participate in an innovative erotic game where each one had five minutes in a personal booth to draw hair on a woman’s bare legs. The female body was staged to become both a sublimated entity and a tender play-ground.

TARENTULA LOVES YOU SWEATHEART

/ installation / La Chambre Garnie / 2011-10

La Chambre Garnie is an installation piece in which I recycled trimmings, silks and vintage advertisements from a Parisian interior decoration company closing a showroom in Brussels. I subtly inserted myself into the pictures by reproducing the lighting situation of the original photoshoots. Both La Chambre Garnie and the video piece La Salle a Manger (The Dining Room) use a bourgeois backdrop to humorously stage a sur-realistic feminine fantasy.

/ video / La Salle a Manger / 2010

/ installation / La Chambre Garnie LA CHAMBRE GARNIE

/ video / La Salle a Manger

/ video / La Cave / 2010

Both dance theatre and a cinematographic essay, La Cave (The Cellar) questions the way we build our fantasies in relation to our everyday life. Centered around a washing machine, a couple appears to dis-cover themselves for the first time. The body trans-forms itself into a dream-like landscape and becomes the passage of one reality into another. The day-to-day is replaced by an ambiguous mixture of dream, experience and absence that reminds us that ethereal love can still remain in the clockwork of a couple.

This video piece was recently streamed on ARTE creative.

LA CAVE

/ installation, video / Auf Deutsch Please / 2010

Auf Deutch, Please! is a video created in collaboration with Charlotte Dupont in the context of Domino-kingdom, an artistic endeavor of Adva Zakai and Miriam Rohde in residency at Nadine (Contempo-rary Art Center, Brussels). The piece was based on ‘The Rationalists’, a text by Bill Aitchinson and dis-patched on various levels of the Nadine headquarters as a looped installation.

AUF DEUTSCH, PLEASE!