About
„In ihren Arbeiten spielt Claire Laude mit Zeichnung, Raum, Architektur und Natur in behutsam arrangierten Bildern. Die Komplexität all dieser Elemente wird auf poetische Weise entfaltet und zugleich wieder verknüpft und in stille, fotografische Erzählungen transformiert. Ritzzeichnungen in Holz und Ton oder verwitterte, zu fragilen Architekturen zusammengefügte Fensterrahmen bilden Arrangements verlassener Orte des Ehemaligen, „Restlandschaften“ (Per Kirkeby) der Natur, die belebt und abgestorben zugleich erscheinen“
Thomas Elsen, Kurator und künstlerischer Leiter H2, Zentrum für Gegenwartkunst im Glaspalast, Augsburg, Painting Photography
Claire Laude is a French architect and artist, who has lived in Berlin since 1997 and works with site-specific installations, photography, drawing, video and texts.
Her work deals with the notion of trace and the construction of the memory of a place. The idea of the perception of a shared memory, the associated phenomenon of “derealization”, and the ambiguity between the imaginary image of a place and lived experience are central points of focus in her research. She choose sites, built or in our natural environnement, that are in danger of disappearing, being forgotten or transformed and questions their reconstruction, destruction and appropriation. She is looking for the image of the perception of a place, situated somewhere between reality, memory and fiction.
She is 2023 one of the Laureate at the Villa Salaambô, Institut français, in Tunis. On November 1st 2021 her book “A Silentio” was published by Editions Essarter, a monograph with photographs and text that examines traces of history in a context of a rural landscape in three areas in Greece and Italy. With her project “Ephemeral Intersects” she won the first prize of the Urbanautica Institute Award in 2019 in the category “Space, Architecture & Conflicts”. Text and images were published in 2019 by Editions Essarter in the trilogy of books The Red Utopias, which brings together different authors and photographers on the subject of political utopias in Europe in a post-Soviet era.
From 2010 to 2017 she was the co-founder and member of the photographers’s collective and the exhibition space exp12/exposure twelve. She’s now member of Pilote Contemporary Berlin.
Claire Laude: Both as an architect and as an artist I have one common topic: the memory of a place. As an architect, I mainly work in rehabilitation and intervention in old buildings. For the architectural project, I search a minimalist intervention, keeping in mind what already exists. As an artist, I focus on places that are in the menace of disappearance or in a phase of transition. Everything that concerns operations of destruction, reconstruction and rehabilitation. I search for traces on the ground, found materials. In both cases my preoccupations are similar. I wonder about the process of memory. Like sedimentation, each “history”, small or big, leaves a trace; and such as layers they come to superimpose one over the other and interact with or destroy each other. This is also a crossover of the reparation concept by Kader Attia, that I would summarize here as a process of cicatrization, a need to “make do” with what subsides a trauma.
I am more particularly interested in the feeling of belonging to a place, everything that can connect us to a place, the collective and individual images, the accompanying dreams, like a double-take or a spectrum of a place, constructed by memories, that subsist the reality. I am interested in all deviations that come with this ambivalence, the phenomena of appropriation and derealisation…: How does the human being appropriate a space? How can someone appropriate a place and talk about it as if they knew it whilst never having lived in it? What is the collective feeling that pushes towards destruction or conservation of a building? How to live in a reconstructed place, an artifact? How come a place can stay present even though it does not physically exist anymore? The image that lasts is situated between a personal remembrance, a collective image and a registration of what is left.
To pick up on Louise Bourgeois (interview on France culture 04/10/2016 ) “Votre souvenir est plus intéressant que la réalité”
Interview with Steve Besson, Urbanautica Awards, 1 Price Category „Space, Architecture and Conflicts“, 2019
EDUCATION
2013 Curating/ Kuratieren, UDK Berlin
2001 & 2006 Photography, Jörn Vanhöfen, Fotografie am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin
From 2013 to 2016 Workshops with Roger Ballen and Eva Leitlof, Esther Teichmann
From 2009 to 2011 and 2015 Masterclasses with Aaron Schumann & Arno Fischer
1998-2004 Architecture, TU-Berlin, Berlin – Dipl. Ing. Architektur
RESIDENCIES, AWARDS & SELECTIONS
2025 Stipendium für Künstler:innengruppen, Künstlerhaus Lukas, Ahrenshoop
2023 Villa Salaambô, Institut français, Tunis
2023 Förderung Kulturelle Bildung Fördersäule 3, Bezirkamt Neukölln
2022 Berlin studio sponsorship (Berliner Atelierfoerderung), bkk Berlin and Berlin Senate, Berlin
2021 Finalist & Special Mention, Allegro Prize 2021, Contemporary Lynx
2020 Scholarship Sonderstipendium Kulturprojekte, Berliner Senat, Berlin
2020 Residency ΚΟΙΝΩΝΩ // Kinono 4 | “Four (plus one) Elements)”, Tinos
2019 Finalist, Open Air Installation, PhotoRoad Gibellina
2019 SÅM Artist Residency, Lessinia
2019 1st Prize Urbanautica Award 2019, Category „Architecture, Space and Conflicts“
2018 Project’s Scholarship, Projektstipendium Mach den Kiosk, Kunst und Projektraum hr Fleischer e.V., Kiosk am Reileck, Halle
2017 Residency Kaunas Photography Gallery, Lithuania
2016 Residency Exchange NCCA, Kaliningrad, and Künstlerhaus Lukas Ahrenshoop, Germany
2015 Selection Portfolios Reviews Encontros de Imagen, Braga
2014 Finalist Prix Virginia 2014
2013 Finalist Open Call Vacatio, Festival Fotografia, Rom
2013 Selection Portfolio Reviews : Descubrimientos PHE13, Madrid & PhotoIreland, Dublin
2009 Award Mission Jeunes Artistes Award, Toulouse
PUBLICATIONS
2023, „Die Grenze der Wahrnehmung“, Süddeutsche Zeitung
2023 „Im Grenzbereich der Fotografie“, Augsburger Allgemeine
2021 A Silentio, Éditions Essarter
2019 Les Utopies Rouges, Éditions Essarter – Vol. II, The Reconciliation of Spaces
2019 RBB Online & Art in Berlin
2019 ATPDiary
2018 VT-ph Visual Thoughts
2017 Bilder den Anderen, Edition Hofes Ahrenshoop
2016 Ahrenshooper Seiten, Edition Hofes Ahrenshoop, Prix Virginia- éditions Filigranes, BLOW Photo, Catalogue Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie
2015 Der Greif Guest Room : Katrin Weber, PEAH, Editions Charlotte Sometimes, Photophores,
2014 L’Oeil, Le Monde M Magazine, Libération, Compétences Photo, Marie-Claire, Ourageis13, Focus Numérique, Fisheye, Phases, Der Greif online, Interview-projects, The Smell of Dust, Catalogue, Festival „Promenades photographiques de Vendôme“, 2014
2013 Catalogue Siehste Geht Doch, Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin, Deutschland
2012 Catalogue Biennale dell’Immagine Bi8, Chiasso, Schweiz
2011 Catalogue Planket, “Det osynliga/ Das Unsichtbare”, Stockholm, Schweden & Berlin, Deutschland
2010 Berliner Jahrhundertläden, Lehmstedt Verlag, Texts : Sabine Zimmer. 160 pictures, 144 pages, hard-cover. ISBN 978-3-937146-97, Sold out
EXHIBITIONS
2024 Y, Loop Raum, B-Part, Berlin
2024 Elle(s), Atelier Neumann, Berlin
2024 Loud, SubTei, 48 Stunden Neukölln, Subtei, Berlin
2024 The Pool, Culterim Gallery, Berlin
2024 Magistrale, Park-Klinik Weissensee, Berlin
2024 Nie war sie so wertvoll wie heute / Neuzugänge der artothek Berlin, Pavillon am Milchhof, Berlin
2023 PaintingPhotography, H2 Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst, Augsburg
2023 Circles, Salon im Moritzplatz, EMOP Berlin
2023 Conference, „La mémoire du lieu : Perception(s) et réalités (dé)-construites“, ENAU, Tunis, 2023
2023 Conference „About Forest fires and their ecological impacts“, Opening ID’BA season in connection with the theme of the „Nuit des Idées/ Night of Ideas „ „More?“, with Claire Laude, Chiraz Belhadj Khedher, Ahlem Ghayaza, Institut français, Tunis
2022 Manifesto, Galerie L’Imagerie, Toulouse
2022 Silent Spring, Galerie am Körnerpark
2022 A Silentio, PHENO, Thessaloniki
2022 Photobook Market, FOTO WIEN, Atelier Augarten, Vienna
2022 Rethinking Nature, FOTO WIEN, Atelier Augarten, Vienna
2022 AXES, Fonderia, Verona
2022 Candela, Pavillon Milchhof, Artspring, Berlin
2021 Utopia, a Nowhere Land, Malmö FotoBiennal, online exhibition
2021 Artist’s book fair, KHB Studios, Berlin
2021 Rethinking Nature, IMAGO Lisboa
2021 Kunst im Bau, Haus des Rundfunks, RBBKultur, Berlin
2020 Breeze & Storm, 48 Stunden Neukölln, Subtei, Berlin
2021 Rethinking Nature, Mois européen de la photographie Luxembourg, Casino Luxembourg
2021 BISCUIT, p145, Berlin
2020 Possible Projects, Blech e.V. Kunst, Halle
2020 5. Roter Kunstsalon, Villa Rot, Burgrieden
2020 pilote : Unter Linden, Subtei, Berlin
2020 ΚΟΙΝΩΝΩ // Kinono 4 | “Four (plus one) Elements)”, „Fire“, Ismail, Tinos, Greece
2019 The Truth in Disguise, Geste, Paris
2019 Axis, SÅM Artist‘s Residency, Bosco Chiesanuova
2019 The Future of Time, GEH8, Dresden
2019 Les Utopies Rouges, Festival Images Singulières, Sète
2019 Fragments, Guardini Galerie, Berlin
2019 Altered States, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, WUK, Vienna
2018 Projektstipendium Mach den Kiosk, Kunst und Projektraum hr Fleischer e.V., Kiosk am Reileck, Halle
2018 Kleister, Berlin
2018 The Inner Forest, Verzasca Foto Festival 2018, Verzasca
2018 One Year, Revolver Collective, Safe House, London
2018 IN VIVO – The Nature of Nature, Noorderlicht, Museum Belvedere, Heerenveen
2017- 2018 Bilder den Anderen, Neues Kunsthaus, Ahrenshoop
2017 Abriss, Haus des Gastes, Waren
2017 International Photography Symposium, Nida
2017 Errance Blanche, Fotohaus ParisBerlin, Arles
2017 Das rätselhafte Verschwinden des Malers Alfred Partikel, Neues Kunsthaus, Ahrenshoop
2017 Durchkonstruierte Situationen, NCCA, Kaliningrad
2016 Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie 2016, Darmstadt
2016 Mouvements de Terrain, Galerie Binome, Paris
2016 Lebensraum- Habitat, ParisFotoBerlin, tête, Berlin
2015 Der Greif – Guest Room : Katrin Weber, Galerie f5.6, Munich
2015 Kleister Weiber, Berlin
2015 Tomorrow has passed, One Eyed Jacks Gallery, Brighton
2014 Rückblicke, aff-Galerie, Berlin
2014 From one place to another, EMOP 2014, exp12/exposuretwelve, Berlin
2014 Natures, Gallery La(b) Galerie Artyfact, Paris
2014 Alexanderplatz- Hier bin ich Mensch, Festival Printemps contemporain de Marseille, La Rétine Argentique, Marseille
2014 Festival Promenades Photographiques de Vendôme, Vendôme
2014 Night Contact, Brighton Photo Biennal
2014 The Smell of Dust, Europa Tour
2014 Kleister Weiber, Berlin
2013 Anfassen, Studio 8, Berlin
2013 ISSP 2013, Kuldīga Town Library Arts Hall, Kuldiga
2013 Me, Myself and I, Rayko Photo Center, San Francisco, USA
2013 Siehste Jeht Doch, Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin
2013 Kleister Weiber, Artist Talk, Berlin
2013 Der Raum dazwischen, Kugelbahn, Kolonie Wedding, Berlin
2013 The Smell of Dust, Kunsthalle Sao Paolo
2013 Slide Luck, Portland
2013 The Flood Wall II, exp12/exposuretwelve Berlin & Biennale de la Photographie Mulhouse, Mulhouse
2013 „Artist as Curator“, Belfast Photofestival, ACMV, Belfast
2012 Out and about with… Claire Laude, Tour & Artist talk, EMOP, Monat der Fotografie 2012, Berlin
2012 Skinning/Häutung, exp12/exposuretwelve, Berlin
2012 Ogni sguardo un passo, Biennale dell’Immagine Bi8, Spazio Officina, Chiasso
2012 Berliner Jahrhundertläden, Biennale dell’Immagine Bi8, Gallery Consarc, Chiasso
2012 Fotobuchsonntag, Gallery erstererster, Berlin
2012 Vendredi Treize, exp12/exposuretwelve, Berlin
2012 Chimères, Gallery Miror Miror, Lyon
2012 The Flood Wall I, exp12/exposuretwelve, Berlin, Amsterdam, Galerie ConsArc, Chiasso; Near by Night 5, NEAR, Lausanne
2012 The Jury Projection, Festival Les Boutographies, Montpellier & Festival Fotoleggendo, Rome
2011 Festival Manifesto, Toulouse
2011 The Jury Projection, Festival Les Boutographies, Montpellier
2011 Planket 2011, Berlin, & Stockholm
2010 Re-Take, EMOP 2010, exp12/exposuretwelve, Berlin
2010 Berliner Jahrhundertläden, exp12/exposure twelve, Berlin
2010 twelve exposures, exp12/exposuretwelve, Berlin
2010 Let down the ruler, Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Studio Julie Mehretu, Berlin
2010 Festival des itinéraires des photographes voyageurs, Bordeaux
2008 Sénégal Présences, Espace Transit, Montpellier
2007 Festival Off des Chroniques Nomades, Honfleur
2007 Festival Voies Off, Arles