LAURENCE AEGERTER

Laurence Aëgerter’s extensive oeuvre comprises of photographs, tapestries, site-specific installations, community projects and artist’s books. Her works are rooted in her fascination for transitions from one state of reality to another, doubling, visual illusions, appearing and disappearing. By making an inventive use of archives and existing images, from illustrated books to museum collections, she examines the archive that shapes our collective memory.

Her transcultural and transhistorical practice reflects on the meaning of the image in relation to identity and shared memories. In recent years she shifted her focus to the fragile edges of the human mind and applied her playful appropriation of images in collaborative projects involving, among others, patients dealing with mental health issues, neurologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists.

Laurence Aëgerter has exhibited in several international solo and group shows and made site-specific installations and art in community projects in assignment for a number of cities and museums.

A selection of solo exhibitions include: ‘Ici mieux qu’en face’ Musée du Petit Palais Paris; ‘Cathédrales’ Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles; ‘Le Louvre’ MAMAC Nice; ‘Arithmetic of photographic perception’ Forum für Fotografie Cologne; ‘Epic of the Mind’ Museum of the Mind Haarlem; ‘Herbarium Cataplasma’ Fries Museum Leeuwarden; ‘The Modernists and More’ Hermitage Museum Amsterdam.

A selection of group shows: ‘From Here On’, Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles/Santa Monica Arts Museum Barcelona/ FoMu Antwerp; 5e Lagos Photo Festival Nigeria; ‘Conceptual Photography’ Art Affairs Gallery Amsterdam, ‘Making Africa’ Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, ‘Rendez-vous avec Frans Hals’ Frans Hals Museum Haarlem and ‘Quick scan’ II Fotomuseum Rotterdam.

Aëgerter won the French national photographic commission 2023, the Nestlé International Prize for Photography, Festival Images Vevey 2015 and the Author Book Award at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles 2018. The Centre des Monuments nationaux gave her a photographic carte blanche in 2023. Actes Sud published her monograph, Ici mieux qu’en face in 2021.

Her works are included in private and public collections of, amongst others, Paul Getty Center Los Angeles, The New York Public Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam, Museum Voorlinden Wassenaar, Museum of the Mind Haarlem, Fries Museum Leeuwarden, Museum van Loon Amsterdam, MAMAC Nice, Musée Borély Marseille, Musée des Beaux-Arts Nancy, Musée national de la céramique Sèvres, BnF Bibliothèque Nationale de France Paris and Musée du Louvre Paris.