Tita Reut, Joëlle Thabaraud — Divination — Berthet – Aittouarès Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: December 5 → 14, 2024

Galerie Berthet Aittouares and Les Editions de La Regondie are pleased to invite you to the presentation of the artist’s book “Divination”, featuring poems by Tita Reut, along with four original works by Joëlle Thabaraud, as well as an additional original piece included in the book’s case. A reading of the poems will take place at 7 PM by the author.

As a publisher, I first encountered Joëlle Thabaraud’s work, who creates her art in collaboration with her husband André, also dedicated to the production of artist books. Joëlle Thabaraud amplifies her work as an art embroiderer by collecting objects and remnants (nests, bones, buttons, trimmings…). She is a gatherer who breathes new life and permanence into debris destined for destruction and oblivion. Her gaze identifies, her hands preserve, and her fingers magnify. What she presents in her boxes grants a sacred character to her collection by wresting it from death, using expertise in embroidery and tapestry, a craft she learned from one of her masters : Grau-Garriga.

She undertakes a unique process of clearing a transcendence through mystery, blending the minute and random refinements of nature with the exquisite details of human ornamentation. The natural forces of wear and decay become more than mere materials: they transform into subjects of creation. It is in this light that her mysterious compositions resonate with me, inspiring words, image assemblages, and connections. Reviving loss through verbal analogies has always seemed to me a poetic approach essential to the survival sought by every act of creation. Moreover, Joëlle’s poetic work resonates deeply with the methods of poetry itself: through the confrontation of different levels of language, she achieves the explosive beauty first described and pursued by the early surrealists.

One might think of another “composer” of boxes: Joseph Cornell. Yet there is a marked difference. Cornell presents a story to be developed through each viewer’s imagination, creating a utopia (an irony, given that he lived in the Utopia neighbourhood of New York). By contrast, Joëlle Thabaraud employs a meticulous attention to detail, harmonized through her style and her own imagination. She aims for a secular sacrality in her assemblages. In this way, her work aligns closely with the methods and definitions I prioritize in my poetry.

Joëlle and I have found in this active reciprocity the driving force behind a dual authorship that comes to life in and through the book. The rarity of her assemblages mirrors that of the poem, whose words and expressions respond to an exceptional principle: precision in rehabilitation, the friction of meaning. The possibility of a work like this naturally follows.

Tita Reut / Paris, April 22, 2023