In Conversation
Embodying Memory and Humanity
AMARGER’s art serves as a window into the human experience. Through transparency and reflection, she explores themes of light, memory, and our interconnectedness with nature. Each piece acts as a palimpsest, revealing the traces of human existence and the fragility of our environment.
1. Your work is widely recognized for exploring themes such as nature, light and memory through a variety of mediums. How do you decide which material or technique to use for a specific project?
I decide on a project based on the materials at my disposal, depending on whether they were purchased or recovered, depending on their size, nature, quality or quantity and the choice of technique depends on the format of the work and its execution time. At the start of my career, I made large-scale tapestries on nature, then I reserved this slow production technique for mini tapestries and mini textiles, introducing natural elements, such as wood, bark and stones. Then, a personal technique based on hot-melt glue threads and the use of sewn, embroidered and painted veils allowed me to work, in transparency, luminescence at night and reflection during the day, to play on light and memory , in large format, in intimate, poetic, luminous or contrasting atmospheres. My studio looks like a laboratory, where I test materials, experiment with techniques, discover and break boundaries, challenge myself, find solutions and make materials and techniques my own. One idea leads to another, the initial intention evolves with the discoveries and the same concept leads me to numerous variations. Laser engraving and cutting, combined with sewing and embroidery, have become essential for creating 2D, 3D series and new scenographies. Lately, I have decided to recover and use the remains of threads and fabrics kept during the production of a work to enhance them, give them a new life and I cut out, overlock and sew all the waste. This allowed me to discover water-soluble material, the free-motion technique and to create new spidery materials that are very different from that of the initial, thick and dense fabric.
2. The use of materials such as x-rays and recycled textiles in your works suggests a very personal and introspective approach. How do you think these materials influence the public's perception of your works?
The radiographic support, through its transparency, calls for projecting oneself inside the other and oneself. It invites a surplus of nudity, illuminates the opacity of a subcutaneous tissue invisible to the naked eye, reveals the memorized spectral image of a body which tells its story through the identification of its marks: seams, staples, threads, prostheses, foreign bodies, scars... It plunges us into the heart of an anatomy, offering a guided tour of an intimate story, giving a sort of police investigation whose object is, in medicine, the search for clues and traces on a body fixed in the moment. Its transparency links the visible to the invisible, reveals an elusive border where reality and imagination can mix, encourage drift, diversion and awaken reveries and fantasies of profanes, plunging them into the mystery of origins. Through works that highlight the contours of known reality in an unknown world, opening to a multiplicity of associations, interpretations and unexpected meanings, the public can combine what they see with their own experience and emotions. All artistic creation encourages reflection and introspection and my art reveals a personal journey open to the world and to others. Hiding one's nudity or highlighting the body is the source of clothing, which offers a second skin to humans. In this relationship with the body, the border between textiles and medical imaging is tenuous. Reflective and luminescent threads and fabrics that play with light, day and night, allow me to reveal in my works, once again, a part of the invisible, by revealing palimpsests of hidden layers. When creating works that recycle discarded materials, it is important to me to use materials rich in metaphorical properties to create allegorical works, capable of inviting the viewer to investigate the traces left by time. These recovered textiles bear the marks and signs of use: like archaeological discoveries, they can reveal things about those who wore them, identity and memory. My work provokes both emotional and intellectual responses. It is an invitation to share these human, societal stories of identity, time, memory, light, the visible and the invisible, life and death... By seizing the spirit of my work, the stimulated public can ask questions and engage in dialogue, not limiting themselves to passive observation.
3. You mention a deep connection between the human body and your creations, especially through the use of medical imagery and textiles. Could you tell us more about how integrating these elements reflects your view on human fragility and the interdependence with nature?
My works undeniably shape a reflection on the fragility of humanity and its interdependence with nature. My deep interest in the scientific and medical world pushes me to question this current body which expresses our complexity and that of the future H+. The x-ray that reveals it and the textile that covers it are inseparable. In connection with fauna and flora, and playing with scale, I use either human silhouettes 2m15 high, in installations, or small ones, from 1.5 to 10cm for 2D and 3D works. ''BESTIAIRE'' questioned our theory of evolution, revealing disrupted and unexpected hidden identities of our common origins: x-rays assembled and sewn, with human hands for the cat, fibrous mammograms for the dog's coat and an animal skeleton for the human, made up of pelvises and spinal columns of dogs and cats. The installation “OSMOSE” presented a “human nature” based on camouflage, mimicry, from oversized bodies where nature appropriates man and where humans become one with nature. An ambiguous work alluding to biological change linked to the genetic evolution of species or its extinction. “Gardeners of the future” whose rise of plant sap is similar to the human venous and blood systems, by sewing and embroidering green threads on recovered green blank x-rays and x-rays of flowers and foliage. Delicate vegetation on the verge of evanescence evoking a fragile beauty to be preserved at all costs. ''CIRCULATIONS'' evoked the Anthropocene, on a body, visible on both sides, between life and death, an anatomical mixture of organs, blood and road networks, palimpsest of paint, ink, scars, seams, road maps and laser-cut medical imaging. “D’ÂME NATURE” offered a seemingly poetic and wonderful world. 50m2 of artificial flower beds, which challenge and question, because they do not belong to any known species, surround a plant waterfall and offer an immersion in the heart of a reinvented nature where invasive plastic, in the form of x-ray images, is diverted , recycled, while suggesting the omnipresence of man. ''STATE OF EMERGENCY MUE MUTATION'' questioned the evolution of rapidly obsolete energy-consuming technologies, their waste to be recycled, and on the humanity of tomorrow, the identity, the future of man, in his body and in his mind, the normalization of hybridizations linked to the future augmented human being H+. The hybrid body of man, in a molt, in osmosis with Nature, is reborn there, rid of these technological trappings. “LA CHUTE”: In the form of human rain, a cascade of silhouettes rotates slowly, giving the impression of falling, in slow motion, into the void. All human fragility is evoked in these bodies which fall inexorably into an infernal fall and question the potential disappearance of the human species. A meditative contemplation, on the loss of balance, the step forward which makes you fall but also move forward, provided you overcome failure and get up again. Facing this dramaturgy, a second installation, light and poetic plant-based, where the quiet and serene fall of leaves evokes another cycle, the immutable one of the seasons, of time which passes inexorably. A majestic nature which confirms the smallness of man in the universe.
4. You describe an interest in themes such as the Anthropocene and environmental preservation. How do you think your art can contribute to awareness and change regarding these issues?
For several decades, my militant artistic concern has always favored ecological issues. In a fragile world, on the verge of a civilization change, my concern about the status and existence of man questions the Anthropocene era, nature modified, degraded and destroyed with its passage, by its anthropic actions. A societal and artistic questioning arises against “disposable everything”, this waste left as a legacy, in a society where production has become synonymous with destruction. I wondered if their future could involve their recycling, becoming sources of valorization, inspiration and creation, in a more eco-responsible circle, which would offer them a second life, by giving them artistic value. My works consider this cycle of textile and radiographic materials, their valorization and the transformation that rehabilitates them, tending towards eco-responsibility and aiming for zero waste. The ''ANTHROPOCENE'' series bears witness to human activities which leave a deep imprint in the geological layers, through networks of luminescent threads which evoke, day and night, the erosion left by man like a fatal signature engraved forever and makes us think about the irreversibility of environmental changes. ''STOP IT'', in reaction against fast fashion, is an installation, of pieces of jeans, recovered clothing, x-rays and plastic bottles, which addresses the problem of pollution of our oceans, which have become receptacles for most of the waste produced by humans, whether of industrial or domestic origin. “THE EARTH IN OUR HANDS #2”, made from the remains of old re-updated weavings, scraps of recycled fabric, pins and x-rays, evokes nature physically and symbolically. It questions the post-human and encourages us to feel the material of this black “earth” which arouses emotion and reflection. Will nature, like the phoenix, still rise from its ashes after the Anthropocene era?
5. What is the next project or exhibition you are excited to share with the public, and how does it align with your current practices and themes?
I am generally working on several projects at the same time, which allows me to take a step back from my works during their creation and to alternate between small and large formats. I am finishing a third body from the “LEMON SKINS” group, accompanied by wall and volume elements. The first two are currently at ''2nd BIENNALE OF MATERIAL ART'', Karamay Art Museum and Cultural Center, Xinjiang, China), I am continuing my series “THE EARTH IN OUR HANDS”, (currently at “TACTILE”, Château de Varaignes, France), going from black to color…a return to what was before… For an upcoming personal exhibition in Paris, I have started to create a large sculpture in the spirit of ''HOMO EXODUS'' (currently at ''ARTE ALTA, ALINA PRIZE Fear'', Church of San Pietro e Orso, Aosta, Italy) and ''ANTHROPOCENE'', (currently at the ''BIENNALE INTERNAZIONALE DI FIBER ART CONTEMPORANEA'', Museo del Ricamo e del Tesssile, Valtopina, Perugia, Umbria, Italy), using more stitched and embroidered x-rays , and stones recovered in mountain walks and during my artist residency in Aosta this summer. I continue my investigations on the double sided Jacquard fabrics and pop-up cutting, in the spirit of “HOMO NATURAE”. I will once again play the surgeon artist who operates, dissects, cuts, assembles, sews, recovers, reconstitutes, discovers, recreates colour palettes, textures, patterns, flat and in volume, in small and large!
