Born in 1992 in Vénissieux (France)
Lives and works in Villeurbanne (France)

Maïté Marra gets very close to bodies – to their strengths and fragilities, in the face of the violence they are subject to. Yet the individuals, often out-of-frame, are present through memories, traces, fragments. What remains is the emotion of an experience, lived by the artist or others, and conveyed without any intention to attenuate or magnify it. In depicting unmitigated pain, Maïté Marra questions the very nature of an exhibition space: what can be shown in a place meant for art?

In the way she cuts up space, the artist offers a slightly distanced perspective – as if overhanging the subject – to move the traumatic experience over into the representation. A mix of fiction and witness testimony, Chapitre III : La chambre implantable suggests the emotional violence of mourning a child’s death. Warned of what awaits them, visitors are invited to walk through the doorway camouflaged by the video projection and to discover a decor-space bathed in light. Here, writing and emptiness give way to an expression of raw suffering.