ISE – Fortuna
3.7 – 7.11.2021
MANAS | Musée d’Art Naïf et d’Arts Singuliers Place de la Trémoille, 53 000 Laval
www.musees.laval.fr
from Tuesday to Saturday, from 9:00 to 12:00 and from 13:30 to 18:00,
Sundays from 14:00 to 18:00
Info Reception, information and reservations: 02 53 74 12 30 / accueil.musees@laval.fr
ISE is an embroidery artist holding a degree from “Universités d’Arts plastiques de Lille et Paris”.
ISE embroiders images and binds her fabrics with tiny stitches integrating papers, ropes, feathers and pendants, giving life to special characters with an unbalanced look and their mouth open in a silent cry.
These are primarily female figures, which seem surprised to discover an invisible world, a universe appearing beyond the composition’s limits.
These stories are gifts, giving rise to a new universal and timeless mythology in which Homero’s stories, oriental influences, Christian symbols and elements from reality come together.
ISE’s practice brings a new life to ancient practices traditionally considered as “minor arts”, tightly related to the female domestic universe. The artist opens up her work to the latest trends in contemporary textile. Heir to the decorative arts, the latter redefines beauty and utility by abolishing the boundaries between domestic work, craftsmanship and artistic creation.
Gouvernail 1, 2020
THE EXHIBITION
This exhibition is inscribed on a broader project started by MANAS to promote textile arts, a widely present medium in the museum’s permanent collection.
The exhibition’s narrative develops from the works made especially for this event through six different spaces, each representing a chapter of a microcosmic history. The titles of the textile works, artist books, ceramics and prints hold a narrative potential that invites the viewers to open the doors of their imagination. The artist stage the exhibition to make the entire show an artwork in itself.
Porte-monde, 2021
THE ARTIST
Born in 1967 in Amiens, ISE graduated from the Universités d’Arts plastiques de Lille et Paris where she taught plastic arts.
From 1995 she has developed an exploratory practice of engraving and printing on fabrics.
Since 2007 Isabelle Cellier has signed her artistic work with the name of “ISE”.
She constantly sewed and, naturally, she has become a picture embroiderer. Since 2011 she has been conducting poetic workshops on textile creation.
In 2012, with the large modular installation: “Les Numineuses”, made for the church of Chapelle-sur-Dun (Seine-Maritime), she changed dimension, expanding into space. Between 2013 and 2019, she exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions (Honfleur, Epernay, Quimper, Nantes, Paris, Reims, Lille, Berlin, Brussels) and participated in art fairs and festivals.
As her works get bigger, they become more complex, the identity reasserts itself, and new stories are born. Alongside the installation, she keeps her practise of drawing and printing. Since 2015 she has been creating artist’s books made of stitching and paintings. In 2019 her personal exhibition was held at La Piscine – André Diligent Museum of Art and Industry in Roubaix. In 2020, she participated in the Paris Art Fair represented by the Frédéric Moisan gallery in Paris and set up the Vibrations Textiles exhibition at the Galerie du Montparnasse, also in Paris. She’s vehemently claiming her otherness: her research has ever been so exploratory, experimental and complex.
Palais de Fortune, L’oeil du monde, 2014
