"Lullabies for the storm" by Laurence Aëgerter

Upcoming exhibition

A contemporary art exhibition inviting visitors to take a mystical walk in dialogue with the architecture of the abbey.

Presentation

Laurence Aëgerter is a French artist based in the Netherlands. A multi-disciplinary artist, she explores the worlds of the visible and the invisible through a multitude of techniques: photography, tapestries, cut-outs, ceramics and site-specific installations.

At the heart of Le Thoronet Abbey, a jewel of Cistercian heritage, Laurence Aëgerter unveils an unexpected journey through three works inspired by the miracle.

A tapestry woven from phosphorescent threads reveals the spiritual link between earth and heaven through a miraculous animal escape.

An audiovisual work presents the metamorphosis of architectural photographs of the abbeys of Sénanque, Silvacane and Le Thoronet, the three Provencal sisters, revealed by the passage of the sun.

A sound composition specially created for Le Thoronet Abbey echoes sighs in the heart of the abbey church.

Cathédrales hermétiques, Abbaye du Thoronet, 2023. Impression chromogénique sérigraphiée avec une encre thermo-sensible.

© Laurence Aëgerter

Biography of the artist

Born in Marseille, Laurence Aëgerter is an international artist who studied at the University of Aix-en-Provence and at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where she has now lived and worked for thirty years. She always works in a collaborative dynamic, diverting archives or techniques to make contemporary societal issues resonate in a different way and to question the world in which we live.

She has taken part in several international exhibitions. She has had solo exhibitions at the Musée du Petit Palais in Paris (2021-20), the Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles (2019) and the Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam (2013). Laurence Aëgerter has been awarded a national photographic commission by the French Ministry of Culture and the CNAP, and the Centre des Monuments Nationaux has given her carte blanche in 2023.

Laurence Aëgerter has produced a number of site-specific installations, including at the Musée du Petit Palais in Paris (2020), the Museum of the Mind in Haarlem (2023) and the Soesterberg military base in the Netherlands (2011). His work can be found in French collections (MAMAC, Nice / Musée des Beaux-arts, Nancy / BnF, Paris / Manufacture et Musée nationaux de la céramique, Sèvres / CNAP / Château Borély, Marseille), Dutch collections (Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam / Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs / Amsterdam Museum / Museum van Loon, Amsterdam / Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar / Museum of the Mind, Haarlem / Fries Museum, Leeuwarden), American (MoMa, New York / The New York Public Library, New York / Paul Getty research Center Institute, Los Angeles / Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas).

Editions Actes Sud published a monograph of his work Ici mieux qu'en face in 2021.