Sophie Ristelhueber
Courtesy Sophie Ristelhueber
Grenier Catherine, Sophie Ristelhueber : la guerre intérieure, Dijon, Les Presses du réel, 2010
→Latour Bruno, Mellor David & Schlesser Thomas (ed.), Opérations, Dijon / Paris, Les Presses du réel / Jeu de paume / CNAP, 2009
→Hindry Ann, Sophie Ristelhueber, Paris, Hazan, 1998
Every One, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 1994
→L’air est à tout le monde II, FRAC, Basse- Normandie, Caen, 2000
→Sophie Ristelhueber, Jeu de paume, Paris, 20 January – 22 March 2009
Portraits de femmes artistes : Sophie Ristelhueber
French photographer and video artist.
Since the beginning of her career as a photographer in the early 1980s, Sophie Ristelhueber’s work has focused on news imagery and the way it is perceived. In 1984, her series Beirut showed pictures of ruins devoid of human presence. These photographs of the Lebanese capital, at the time a symbol of war, describe a reality far removed from the shocking images usually seen in photo stories. The critical acknowledgement of this first series of works coincided with a reassessment of the uses of photography – an important topic worldwide in the 90s. The originality of the photographer’s work lies in the way she depicts the notion of memory through an aesthetic of traces and scars. While her work has consistently looked at a variety of techniques for inspiration, the artist chose to diversify her own practice in the 2000s. She used sound (1999, sound track) and image as a means to explore the subjects that run through her work, particularly in her videos: memory, and the resistance of nature and the elements to the damage inflicted on them by humanity (Le Chardon [Thistle], video, 2007). Fatigues (video, 2007) presents a personal reflection on her entire body of work.
With Stitches (2005), the artist created embroidered canvases of words spoken by G. W. Bush and completed the installation with photographs of Palestinian land. She received significant recognition in 2009 with a comprehensive exhibition of her works at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris and the publication of a monograph (Opérations).
© Éditions des femmes – Antoinette Fouque, 2013
© Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, 2018
