List of products by brand Manon Gignoux
2019
Graduate of the Beax Art de Paris, DNAP (2017), DNSAP (2019) (after a first cycle of studies at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré, Paris / master Fashion Design)
2018
Mobility exchange at Kyoto City University of Arts, Japan
COLLECTIONS
Acquisition of two drawings by the Cabinet des amateurs de dessin for the collection of the Beaux Arts de Paris
Acquisition of four videos - performances form the Mibo series for the Banque Neuflize OBC collection
Acquisition of two textile sculpture figures for the collection of the Musée Galliera, Paris
AWARDS / RESIDENCIES
2020
Winner of the Contemporary Drawing Prize at the Beaux-Arts de Paris
Winner of the Camus Project / drawing - painting with a "plant" theme on three floors at the Ministry of Culture, Paris
Nominated for the Prix Révelation du livre d'artiste Mad / Adagp
2011
Residency at the Art Center of Val de Sarthe
Preselected for the Casa Velazquez, Academy of France in Madrid
Preselected for the Villa Kujoyama
SOLO EXHIBITIONS (selection)
2025
Solstice d’été : Château de Ratilly (Yonne)
2019
Rouge Pied, dnsap exhibition, Beaux-Arts de Paris
2017
Textile chronicles, Maison des Arts Solange-Baudoux, Evreux
Forms, clothes, Mibo... (Inventories), dnap exhibition, Beaux-Arts de Paris
2014
The war effort, creations in echo to the collections, Museum of Nuits-Saint-Georges Crossings, Château de Sainte Colombe en Auxois
2012
Clothes Memory and Time Clothes, Old Books & Gallery Shirasa, Tokyo
2011
Clothes and Men, Forum des Images, Paris
Oripeaux, Cultural Center of Gentilly
Oh, it was a day...!, Centre d’Art du Val de Sarthe
COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS (selection)
2024
Drawing Now Art Fair, Carreau du Temple, Paris
Maison des Arts d'Antony, quand les fleurs nous sauvent
L'Art dans les Chapelles du Pays du Léon, Chapelle Saint Fiacre, Plouider (Finistère)
Faire corps avec la montagne, mineral lodge, Villaroger, Savoie
2021
Exposition of the nominees of the Contemporary Drawing Prize, Beaux-Arts de Paris macparis cahier d'autonme, Bastille Design Center, Paris
2020
Vidéobox X, Neuflize OBC corporate collection, Carreau du Temple, Paris
2019
Only you, collection dof Neuflize OBC Bank, Friche de la Belle de Mai, Marseille
2018
Koromo, Shikokumura Museum, Shikoku Island, Japon
2017
The whole is smaller than the part, Bétonsalon, Paris (with Claude Closky's studio)
The impossible portrait, Imix Gallery (with 3 students from the Tosani workshop)
Background, Duchamp Contemporary Art Gallery, Yvetot
2016
Hey Marie, Out of the box, Bruxelles
2014
In Absentia - poetics of clothing, Galerie Coullaud & Koulinsky, Paris
L’envers, Château de Sainte Colombe en Auxois
2013
Desire of books, desire of images, organized by Filigranes Éditions, Hôtel de Sauroy, Paris
Dialogue textile - mineral / La Marbrerie, Montreuil
2011
Museum of the Chemiserie, Argento
INTERVENTIONS
Cité de l’Histoire et de l’Immigration, Paris, (Habits - habitats, workshop with children)
MacVal, Vitry sur Seine, Un peu de tenue avec Edwine fournier (with high school students)
Centre pénitentiaire de Réau, Essonne (with women prisoners)
Cité de l’Histoire et de l’Immigration, Paris (with children)
École du Théâtre National de Strasbourg (with students in scenography - costume)
École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré, Paris (students in textile art)
LIVE ART AND COSTUME DESIGN
2012-20
On three creations of the street theater company TheatreFragil, Berlin / Detmold2012Petrouchka, choreography Raphaëlle Delaunay, Cité de la Musique, Paris
2011
Bal Paré, Compagnie Tangible, scenography and performance, Festival Les Pronomade(s) en Haute GaronneLa Cerisaie, directed by Julie Brochen, TNS / Théâtre de l’Odéon, ParisLa Traversée des Faux Plis, Cie Tangible Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, ParisAu Revoir Parapluie, James Thiérrée et la Cie du Hanneton, Théâtre de la Ville, Paris
PUBLICATIONS (selection)
Selvedge, The World of Interiors, Revue du Louvre, Heaven, La Voix du Nord, Interni, Dutch, So-en, Minotaure, Libération, Jeunes Créateurs, Bloom, Les Éditions derrière la salle de bain, The Eyes
ARTISTS' BOOKS (selection)
Mibo (2020)
Edition Duo (2017)
Black clothes (2017)
Cardboard forms (2017)
Anonymous (2015)
After an initial course of study at the Duperré School of Applied Arts, Manon Gignoux developed an artistic practice at the intersection of visual arts and dance, and went on to attend the Beaux-Arts de Paris, graduating in 2019. She has since cultivated a multifaceted practice: drawing as a danced trace around her body; garments diverted from their function to become volume, sculpture, or shadows revealed on paper; images or disruptive elements; video; and performance. Her research explores the presence or absence of the body, its relationship to time and movement, and to both the inert and the living.
From these questions, between 2018 and 2022 she created a series of drawings titled Bodies, Shadows, Vegetables, which earned her the Contemporary Drawing Prize from the Cabinet of Drawing Amateurs at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, as well as the Camus project at the Ministry of Culture thanks to a set of large-scale frescoes on a plant-based theme. Four of her videos have entered the Neuflize OBC collection. Her work is also held in the collections of the Musée Galliera and the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
She has since taken a particular interest in the relationships between the dancing body, clothing, and vegetables, moving toward the idea of a “danced garden” as a world in itself—a shared world, crossed and inhabited by persistent bodies whose lingering traces she seeks to draw out. This persistence—expressed in “shadow garments,” which carry past presences (bodies, gestures, traces) or hold the seeds of what is to come, of spaces yet to be—also meets a desire to create and to participate in the cycles of life. In this sense, vegetables, as nourishing and other, awaken the inner landscapes of our bodies. They invite us to read what is inhabited and to sharpen our perception of the very material they are made of: how can we gather the habits that persist in the insistence of certain forms within things?
Since 2020, her work in drawing and painting has been nourished by flowers and by a new sensitivity to color, as well as by encounters with other living beings (plant and human), which speak of things that are at once very simple and deeply mysterious—perhaps a way of creating more closely in tune with life cycles.
We often speak of clothing as a second skin. Manon Gignoux has taken this idea far in her exploration of the textile envelope that follows our gestures and movements and reveals much about our nature. She has infused it with volume, transforming it into sculpture; recorded its imprint and its age; examined its seams to create strange monochrome compositions; even buried and unearthed it to observe the scars of time. In short, she has interrogated it in order to embody it more fully through her sculptures, photographs, drawings, installations, writings, videos, and performances. It all began with a pile of clothes and objects found at the foot of a building by this former fashion student. The entire story of their owner—the imprint of her body—could be read there, inscribed like a watermark in the fabric. These true substitutes for the body, poised between presence and absence, movement and gesture, trace and residue, were collected and became the basis of her first textile détournements. This was followed by further installations and textile sculptures in which one can observe rags, fraying, folds, drapery, tears, mending, and patchwork under the gaze of the living. From this sensual relationship with matter, Manon Gignoux developed an increasing interest in the body.
Photographs of anonymous subjects thus see their bodies extended through drawing. Inspired by sensory movement practices and improvisational dance, she began to follow the motions and pulsations of her own body in order to record them. Kneeling on paper, she traces the outlines and marks of her body. Gradually, all these experiences led her to redraw these forms and presences in graphite, watercolor, or a blend of black and blue inks on white paper. Clothing, the presence-absence of bodies, movement, and imprints appear in a supple, graceful line, on the verge of fragility.
Restrained, sensual, and timeless, poised on the threshold between the visible and the invisible, Manon Gignoux’s works unfold between expression and abstraction, always inhabited by a vital breath.
—Anaïd Demir
