Tania Mouraud

Her artist's books, as FlashS' (2020), confirm this work of the word and the sign as plastic manifestations.

"Tania Mouraud, Mots de formes", Élisabeth Lebovici, Libération 19/11/92

"Ni", Georgina Oliver, The Paris Metro, 18/01/78, Paris

This last artwork uses a computer program to establish a unique composition, which the artist wants to free from patriarchal pictorial canons thanks to the element of chance allowed by the process. This taste for programming is also put to work with the Mots-Mêlés (2017-2021), which hide poems or opera excerpts behind black flat tints.

March 4, 2015, marks the debut of Tania Mouraud. A Retrospective. This is the first major monographic exhibition of the artist and was shown at the Centre Pompidou-Metz. This retrospective will be accompanied by nine other exhibitions in Metz in nine different places like the Regional Contemporary Art Fund of Lorraine (Frac Lorraine) and at the Galerie d'Exposition de l'Arsenal, creating a veritable journey through the city.

"Tania Mouraud: Engagée volontairement", Piguet Philippe, L'Oeil n°678, avril 2015

"Tania Mouraud, méditation spirituelle", Anne Tronche, Artpress N°420, 21 mars 2015

"Tania Mouraud, la fureur et la rage", Emmanuelle Lequeux, LeMonde, 9 janvier 2015

"Tania Mouraud. Une rétrospective", entretien avec Philippe Piguet, Art Absolument n°64, 12 mars 2015

Trans, Maïten bouisset, Quotidien de Paris, 15/16.1.77, Paris

Trans, J.J. Levêque, Quotidien de Paris, 13/1/77, Paris

First Ural Industrial Biennale of contemporary arts 2010, Special projects, National Center for Contemporary Arts, Ekaterinburg, Russia (catalogue)

In 2008, continuing with her photographic paintings, Tania Mouraud presented the new series "Borderland", displaying a reflection of landscapes of "round balers" of straw. Other series she created include Rubato, created on rubber tree plantations in Kerala. Désastre centers on the gaps in forests created by deforestation or Balafres showing quarries in Germany.

In 2008, a press release for the opening of Roaming, Borderland we read that this creation "is considered a testimony of her exceptional mastery of the art of video. Shot in black and white, the dark undergrowth of images and watchtowers are reworked and almost become abstract, and then are accompanied by an acoustic creation that accentuates their dramatic character. Captured at twilight and magnified by the work of the artist, these pieces of nature become metaphors for the human condition, violence, loneliness and death ".

Then it follows a musical course via the Internet at the Berklee College of Music. Since J.I.T. in Brest (2008), she performed live solo improvisations accompanying her videos at the Béton Salon in Paris, and during the same year at the Centre d'art passerelle in Brest, musée de la chasse et de la nature in Paris and at the Lieu unique in Nantes, during the Nuit Blanche 2012 at Gare d'Austerlitz as well as the Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne (Mac/Val) during her exhibition of Ad Nauseam in 2014.

In Tania Mouraud's work, we find a taste for a mutual translation of words and images. The Dream series (2005) exposes the quote "I have a dream", translated into 25 languages. It reflects the rapid shift that writing can make to drawing when it cannot be read. The writing becomes a line, a pictorial element.

Working in the video field has encouraged Tania Mouraud to radicalize her work through sound. After some concerts with the group Unité de Production she founded in 2002, Tania Mouraud embarked on live solo performances. Her video installations, including Ad Infinitum (2008) or Ad Nauseam (2014) and her collaboration with the Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique (Ircam) marked a turning point in her work.

In 2002, Tania Mouraud founded the musical experimentation group " Unité de Production " with Christian Atabekian, Ruben Garcia, Pierre Petit, Cyprien Quairiat, Marie-Odile Sambourg, Sylvain Souque and Baptiste Vandeweydeveldt.

In 1996, she scattered 4000 small medals marked with the word love on the streets of New York, at the Fondation Cartier and at the Mirabelle Festival in Metz.

Agenda international de l'art 1996, Les éditions internationales de l'art, Paris

"De la décoration à la décoration", Irène Constandse Uit Arnhem, avril 1994, Arnhem

"Franse Kunst in Nederland", Association artistique d'action artistique France Kunst, avril 1994, p. 20

"Franse Kunst..." Wim van der Beek De Telegraph April 8, 1994, Hollande

"De Nulgraad van het Schilderen Janneke Wesseling", April 15, 1994, Hollande

"Politiek werk van Tania Mouraud", Zondagkraut April 3, 1994

Klei Duimpje in borstzak generaal Martin Peiterse De Gelderlander April 1, 1994, Nimègue

"Tania Mouraud... " Yvonne Jansen Apeldoornse Courant April 30, 1994, Arnhem

"Met een gasmasker... " Marianne Vermeijden, NCR, March 25, 1994, Amsterdam

In 1993, Tania Mouraud directed "Apartment 374", an ongoing intervention in an apartment of the l'Unité d'habitation by Le Corbusier in Firminy. The codified signs of nomads are sandblasted onto the windows of the living room, turning it into a "welcoming home". For the duration of the exhibition, croissants were distributed free to the public.

"One more night...Zu Tania Mouraud Meditationsraum", Pierre Restany in Meta 4 Radical Chic, Stuttgart, 1993, p 103-109

"Public & Privé", catalogue de l'exposition, Édimbourg, 1993, p 66

Gazette trimestrielle sur l'Art contemporain, n°6, juin 1993

While she displayed her Wall Paintings series within the art school where she teaches, Tania Mouraud transmitted her vision of the responsibility of the artist facing history: "With this exhibition, I hear students ask the same question I ask myself: what does it mean to be an artist in '92? In 1992, when there are three million people unemployed in a manner seemingly excluding them from society, and that we see the reappearance of the specter of racism? Then there was the phrase, "I have a dream" written in strongly elongated and somewhat illegible lettering, but there will always be someone to decipher them. I speak for that person. It's a secret. "

During the same period, she continued to grow her series of photographs. In the late 1990s, she created her first videos. The themes of anguish and responsibility in the world are the basis of her videos and draw inspiration from her life that has been marked by mourning; "... In my artistic work, from the beginning, this obsession is really something fundamentally intimate that I share with the public."

For the artist, the practice of "the sequential image" has long been set aside but it was during the 1990s that Tania Mouraud gradually became interested in video. "I have become accustomed to walking with a camcorder and, little by little, the idea has emerged." It was the 2000s that marked a turning point for the artist where video became an important part of her work.

During this period, she began her famous Wall Paintings which were huge black painted letters that were stretched, straight, and very close together to the point of almost being illegible. They form a word or sometimes a phrase, such as "I Have a Dream". In 1989, "WYSIWYG" (What you see is what you get) was exhibited at the BPI of the Centre Georges-Pompidou where "the first of the Wall Paintings of Tania Mouraud concealed the slogan of a well-known brand of computer beneath its lofty appearance".

This research continues with the Wallpaintings since 1989, which require a particular attention to be read, but also with the exploded writings (2012-2017).

"Tania Mouraud, Au-delà de l'image", Mo Gourmelon le carreres, Arte Factum n°30, 1989, Anvers

«Le lèche-vitrines de Tania Mouraud", Christian Caujolle Libération, November 2, 1983, Paris

"De l'avant-garde à l'avenir", Gilles de Bure, Vogue Hommes, octobre 1983 n°63, Paris

"Tania Mouraud et Pierre Petit", Gérard Durozoy, Canalmanach, avril 1983, Paris

«Images Fabriquées", Elizabeth Couturier, art press, janvier 1981, Paris

In the mid-1980s, various photographic series began emerging, including Made in Palace, composed of black and white photos taken during "gay parties" at a Parisian club showing turbulent and multisensory spaces in blurry images. For the artist, there is a connection between painting and photography. Other series appear until 1992, consisting of pictures of kitsch objects in different places.

"Onze artistes européens et Lyon", Jacqueline Rozier, Le Journal, June 23, 1980, Lyon

"Lyon, Carrefour européen", Michel Nuridsany, Le Figaro July 18, 1980, Paris

"Tania Mouraud ", Performance dans la ville", Xavier Girard, Cahiers de l'École sociologique interrogative n°1, 1980, Paris

"Paysage sonore urbain", Bernard Delage, Plan Construction, 1980, Paris

"Occupation textuelle de Tania Mouraud", Le Monde, January 25, 1978, Paris

"Ni, le cri de Tania dans la ville", Pierre Cabane, Le Matin, January 11, 1978, Paris

It is the same with the counter-forms of the letters that the artist explores, in particular with City Performance n°1 (1977), the series of Words (1988), that of Black Continent (1990-1991), that of Black Power (1988-1992) and the piece Alea 718 (1989).

In 1977, Tania Mouraud organized her first "City performance": 54 4x3 meter billboards on which the word "NI" is written and posted in several Parisian arrondissements. "Absolute negation, a denial, all the more disturbing, when it does not say what it is targeting. This seems to be resistance to the usual forms of advertising discourse, and the market sphere in whose service it is placed" writes Arnauld Pierre.

"Art spaces", Germano Celant, Studio International, septembre-octobre 1976, Londres

In 1975, Tania Mouraud created in situ installations called "Art Spaces" in which short phrases, written on plastic construction sheeting the size of the wall, question the conditions of visual perception and lead the viewer to a vertiginous awareness from where he can see the depth of what he is doing.

"ARC 1973 1983", catalogue de l'exposition, musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris

The Photo-texts (1971 - 1973), the Plastics (1972 - 1990), the Mandala (1972-1974) or the Kairos performance (1978) question perception, reading, the way in which language conceals reality and the limits of language.

An autodidact, Tania Mouraud began her artistic career when young with Initiation rooms, spaces dedicated to introspection. In the 1970s, through an analytical and intellectual approach, her work combined art and philosophy at the same time based primarily on words, and later on their typography.

In 1968, after returning from Documenta IV, Tania Mouraud publicly burned all of her paintings.

In 1968, Tania Mouraud created her first environments, called "Initiation Rooms". It is composed of glossy white spaces which combine to bring oneself toward introspection. Understanding the space in a psychosensory fashion creates perceptions of self-awareness. These environments are preceded musical performances by Pran Nath, Ann Riley and Terry Riley and La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela.

Her first exhibition took place in 1966 at the Zunini gallery in Paris where she exhibited her Peintures médicales. "If my painting is intentionally schematic it is because I want to escape the pathos in the search of precision. I like that which is clear. Feelings are dangerous; the object is defined, reassuring. If one day I decide to paint the human figure, it will be as an object. "

In the late 1960s, she lived in New York, where she met Dennis Oppenheim, and came into contact with the New York art scene.

Tania Mouraud has been working on the malleability and plasticity of writings since the 1960s. For her, it is a system of representation, with its highlights and invisibilities.

Tania Mouraud (born January 2, 1942, in Paris) is a contemporary French video artist and photographer.

Tania Mouraud was born in Paris on January 2, 1942. She is the daughter of Martine Mouraud, journalist, publicist turned businesswoman, and writer. Her Romanian-born father, Marcel Mouraud, was a lawyer and collector of modern art. Both her parents were engaged in the Résistance.

"Tania Mouraud at PS1", John Perreault, [[The SoHo Weekly News]], 22/9/77, New York