Prix AWARE

Gabrielle Manglou
Nominee of Prix 2025

Portrait of Gabrielle Manglou © Alix Frégier

Questions as charades; riddles as answers; knots as folds; artworks as magic formulas. Gabrielle Manglou (born in 1971 in La Réunion) is a practitioner of installations and enigmas, of collecting stories and finding treasures.

Gabrielle Manglou - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Gabrielle Manglou, La Fonte Des Glaces / solo show H.O.C / 2018 / Extract – Series / Reproduction of a black and white photograph (Fond Paul et Laurence Vergès – Photo Françoise Vergès) and Adelis water ice / Archives départementales de La Réunion & Cité des Arts de La Réunion production / “Patrimoine et création” residency, Réunion department / ADR / ©ADR (Archives départementales de La Réunion)

In her compositions of all sizes, half-secrets are told and whole stories are rewritten. All you have to do is follow the pebbles, collages, and montages that she leaves along the way to find your way back to the north, or rather, to understand that there are multiple possible norths, all around you. In her installations, of all shapes and colours, she traces paths based on what she has come across on her own way. They are paved with clues that tell us as much about where she comes from as where she hopes to take us – and perhaps even lose us.

Gabrielle Manglou - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Gabrielle Manglou, AMARRER À L’OMBRE / solo show / 2020 / Exhibition view / Variable size – Wood, fabric, bone, bamboo, leather, paper, gold, acrylic, neon… / La Criée Centre d’art contemporain & Le Musée de la Marine production / Territoires EXTRA residency / Musée de la Marine Port-Louis / © MarcDomage

Gabrielle Manglou - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Gabrielle Manglou, AMARRER À L’OMBRE / solo show / 2020 / Exhibition view / Variable size – Wood, fabric, bone, bamboo, leather, paper, gold, acrylic, neon… / La Criée Centre d’art contemporain & Le Musée de la Marine production / Territoires EXTRA residency / Musée de la Marine Port-Louis / © MarcDomage

Gabrielle Manglou - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Gabrielle Manglou, AMARRER À L’OMBRE / solo show / 2020 / Detail / Headdresses-Perruques / Variable size – Hemp, fabric, rope, bamboo, pearls, oyster shells / La Criée Centre d’art contemporain & Le Musée de la Marine production /  Territoires EXTRA residency / Musée de la Marine Port-Louis / ©GabrielleManglou

Following the uneven pink neon of Amarrer à l’ombre (2020), the eye snakes over the mountain beneath the wooden structure that evokes the hold of slave ships. The light pine structure that supports the whole is a model and a treasure hunt, on which those who choose the advanced option will be reminded that the mountains of chocolate truffles were brought back from across the Atlantic. Above them float headdresses of unravelled hemp, made from the same material that is usually used to make ships watertight. Here, the unravelled fibre hangs in the air. The journey is suspended. In this way, the meaning of the word is called into question, and the polysemy it usually conceals is revealed. One man’s pleasure is another man’s conquest, the exotic here and the local there, every victory a defeat, every appropriation a loss.

Gabrielle Manglou - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Gabrielle Manglou, BAGATELLES / group show / Astèr Atèrla / 2023-2024 / Detail / Variable size – Leather, paper, fabric, cardboard… / Curated by Julie Crenn / Produced by FRAC Réunion + CCCOD Tours + La Friche de La Belle de Mai / La Friche de La Belle de Mai Marseille / ©jcLett

Gabrielle Manglou - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Gabrielle Manglou, BAGATELLES / Group show / Astèr Atèrla / 2023-2024 / Exhibition view / Variable size – Wood, fabric, sand, bamboo, leather, paper, acrylic, cardboard… Curated by Julie Crenn / Production FRAC Réunion + CCCOD Tours / CCCOD Tours / ©margotmontigny

Gabrielle Manglou - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Gabrielle Manglou, BAGATELLES / Group show / Astèr Atèrla / 2023-2024 / Exhibition view / Variable size – Wood, fabric, sand, bamboo, leather, paper, acrylic, cardboard… Curated by Julie Crenn / Production FRAC Réunion + CCCOD Tours / CCCOD Tours / ©margotmontigny

In the midst of chaos, Gabrielle Manglou’s installations are maps for orientation, and dictionaries where words become signs, objects and, once again, words, in other languages, in all languages. With the Bagatelles she has been assembling since 2023, she composes sentences from a little of something old, a little of something new, a little of something blue. Long live the alliances that the artist enjoys creating!

Gabrielle Manglou - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Gabrielle Manglou, Solo exhibition / DÉLICATOLITHO / 2021 / Detail / Pebbles, wood, watercolor, fabric, acrylic, graphite powder, string… / Curated by Alessandra Prandin / CAP Saint-Fons / ©CAP Saint-Fons

Through her collages, sculptures, and recycling of works that she has already made – and that have not yet expressed everything they had to say – and through the fake books and true tales that she invites round her table, Gabrielle Manglou is pursuing the history of La Réunion that she has been tracing for years, and of which Hypothèses de l’Objet en creux (2018) set out the first avenues of interpretation. Based on the premise that there are few archaeological remains on the island where she was born, on the presupposition that history can only be written through objects, and on her taste for going against the grain, the artist is now recomposing histories through the imprints, visible and invisible, that each chapter has left in its wake, in the land and in memories, in bodies and in hearts, and around all the presences that she strives to link.

Gabrielle Manglou - AWARE Artistes femmes / women artists

Gabrielle Manglou, Tracés, pliés / Duo exhibition with Joey Arand / 2024 / Detail, exhibition view / Wood, fake fruit, watercolor photocopies, Japanese paper / Curated by Carola Ruf / Kunst Temple Kassel / ©CarolaRuf

She rarely uses continuous or parallel lines. Instead, she prefers accordions. Playfully, she bends, unfolds and folds lines, signs, and all that they conceal, to compose stories to be soaked up by all the senses, to be felt, to be dug into and, above all, to be passed through by. In the chaos, in the end, perhaps all things are one.

Horya Makhlouf is an art historian, art critic and co-founder of the Jeunes Critiques d'Art collective. She is also artistic coordinator and curator of special projects at the Palais de Tokyo since 2024. She writes for artists, magazines and art institutions, and has participated in the podcasts L'esprit critique (Mediapart), PQSD (Jeunes Critiques d'Art) and Verni-es (Projets Media). Recently, she curated the exhibition “Une Affaire de famille” (CAC Passerelle, Brest, 10.24.2024 – 01.25.2025), the Nuit Blanche program at Césure (Paris, 2023), and co-curated “LA ELLE”, an on-site work by Renée Levi (with Hugo Vitrani, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2024).

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