originally published in her. magazine volume 10

Marguerite Humeau - Art's Paleontologist

Marguerite Humeau is an artist that is fascinated by evolutionary function. Based on her extensive research and study in zoology, biology, palaeontology, and occult sciences, she is able to reinvent the past or to create her own future, blending her minimalist high-end fantasy with the feel of archaeological-like treasures. Having graduated from London’s Royal College of Art in 2011, studying experimental design rather than fine art, Humeau approaches her work quite differently from what one may imagine from a traditional artist. Working with various experts to develop strong themes and understandings, Humeau has described herself as an “Indiana Jones in Google times”, producing large scale works and exhibitions that reflect on life’s existential questions such as, “Where did we come from?”, and “What does it mean to exist?”. Humeau has had solo shows at C L E A R I N G, Brussels and New York, New Museum in New York, the Tate Britain, London, Palais de Tokyo, Paris and appears in the collections of MoMA, New York, and Centre Pompidou, and exhibited at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris amongst others.

As your work process is quite innovative for a traditional ‘fine artist’ in that you use a lot of digital technology alongside your own studies and real craftsmen, how would you classify or describe what you do?

I just say ‘artist’ (laughs). All of the technology and processes that I’m using come from my design background, having studied Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art in London and before that, Industrial Design in Holland. So, when I was at the RCA, the Opera of Prehistoric Creatures, which is now at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville Paris, was really the start of my career as an artist. It started as a design project and developed into something that people and myself would classify as an art piece, so it was a natural progression to ‘being’ an artist rather than consciously wanting to be one. The process of making these pieces and how I continue to work now comes from the industrial design background as that’s how I’ve developed. I feel that using 3D models and CNC machines, for example, to create artificial life from scratch using technology and industrial processes, is an interesting juxtaposition and this has now become the core of my practice.

The amount of research, reading, and deep understanding of your subjects plays a monumental part in what you do. To take it from there, through to your drawings and then into the finished pieces, you work with a number of people to achieve the final outcome. Could you talk us through a typical timeline when creating a piece for a new exhibition?

It really depends on the project but there is always less time than I usually need! The research process can be quite long. At the beginning of my career, I was working project-to-project but now I have built up a huge landscape for myself that I want to explore so the research phase is now an ongoing process. Now, when a project or exhibition comes along, I can draw from this territory and develop my ideas from this core of work. I then spend a few weeks, maybe up to a month or so, on drawings. Then I take these to the studio team and we start translating the drawings into CAD models. Translating my vision and drawings into a 3D object can take a couple of weeks to get right in order to bring the vision that I had to life. Then we start the production phase, depending on the process, for example, if the pieces are unique or are being moulded in resin, or cast in bronze, which is a newer exploration for me. As this is happening, I then move onto producing the show which involves more than the sculptures. I develop the show ‘ecosystem’, working on components such as sound pieces, diagrams and the exhibition design itself. Overall, it all takes about 4 to 6 months.

Which part of the creation do you enjoy the most?

It’s the installation I enjoy the most. There is no way I can know how the show will look or feel as an experience before I set it up. This can be frustrating but makes the installation time really exciting. Usually, I try and ask for longer installation periods than other artists because until I’m there, I’m not really sure how things are going to interact. I use a lot of sound pieces that are not just about the sound but how they interact with the pieces, how the sound moves around the space and works with the sculptures, so all the way until the opening day the shows can change drastically.

Here in London’s prestigious Tate gallery in 2018, you occupied the ArtNow room with your 2015-piece Echoes. I remember hearing it before seeing it thanks to what was Cleopatra’s voice echoing throughout the room. To accurately present this you collaborated with a number of experts; who has been the most interesting to work with?

There’s not one in particular but a few… the first was one of the technical advisors for Jurassic Park. I contacted him when I was working on the Opera of Prehistoric Creatures and I remember I had a Skype conversation with him when my English was really bad and he had a really heavy American accent so I think I could only understand half of what he was saying at first! I was so excited though as he had so many anecdotes and stories on how he was replicating the sound of dinosaurs for the film.

Another would be Joy Reidenberg, an American anatomist who specialises in the vocal and breathing apparatus of mammals, and who appeared on Inside Nature's Giants, directing whales which helped me in my practise. I met her whilst I was doing the Opera of Prehistoric Creatures back in 2010 and then I contacted her again for my project on the relationship between climate change and the birth of spirituality in animals. I asked her to bring me back some whale tears and breath from an expedition she was on. I didn’t think it would happen but as a coincidence she had to come to a conference in London, so she brought them back for me. She’s a really amazing and generous woman who’s passionate about what she does.

The last would be a French writer, ethnomusicologist, and specialist of Mongolian shamanism, called Corine Sombrun, who I worked with on my exhibition at the new Museum for my show Birth Canal and eventually became Ecstasies at the Kunstverein in Hamburg. I was doing research on trance, asking people from many different fields about its effect on brain activity and her story was enthralling. She went to Mongolia to document a shamanic ceremony and as it unfolded, she instantly went into a trance without really knowing what had happened to her. The shaman went to see her and he was upset that she had not told him that she was also a shaman because it can be highly dangerous for two shamans to be part of the same ceremony, especially if they are not aware of one another. Because of her reaction to the ceremony, she was told that she had been called by the spirits to become a shaman; and that if she didn’t follow this call, then they would follow her until she committed to the ultimate goal in her life. She eventually became a shaman herself after undertaking training in Siberia and since then has worked with neurologists to scan the human brain and monitor it when under trance looking at how the brainwaves under the trance state looks exactly like those produced under certain brain conditions, for example, in people who experience depression or schizophrenia. I thought this was really interesting as it could be that people with these conditions may be ‘stuck’ in a different brain state or frequency. This means that what we have considered to be diseases or abnormal conditions might be just different modes of consciousness, out of the norm, but not diseases. Secondly, it might be that with the help of trance, we can bring them back to what would be considered the “default mode”.

Echo, A matriarch engineered to die,Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2016 Photo: Spassky Fischer Courtesy the artist, C L E A R I N G New York/Brussels — Echo, A matriarch engineered to die,
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2016
Photo: Spassky Fischer
Courtesy the artist, C L E A R I N G New York/Brussels

You also take great care in not only the pieces themselves but how they are portrayed and experienced. You often work with all of the human senses, introducing sounds as well as the special design of the exhibition. Do you think this connects the audience with the work on a more visceral level?

That’s the main aim of my practice - trying to enact situations so my installations are not so much about individual objects, but the relationship between all the beings at stake; do they contradict each other or complement each other? I’m much more interested in that than just the production of objects or sounds as individual pieces. I’m obsessed with creating worlds that exist without humans. I recreate worlds that are extinct, or I speculate on world’s that have never existed or that may exist on parallel evolutionary line. To do this, I’m using the different senses humans can experience these worlds and have their own connection with the exhibition rather than telling them what they should take from the work. For example, in the Tate exhibition Echoes, the space was covered with a toxic yellow paint sourced from Black Mamba venom and this was juxtaposed with the sensual voice of Cleopatra. At some point, you would realise that she’s a voice that doesn’t have a body or soul and comes from an empty shell so there’s something exhilarating in the sensuality of her voice, yet horrific at the same time. This show dealt specifically with the colliding experiences of an extreme acceleration of life, and of death, in the same space, at the same time.

Mark Rothko famously said that “a painting is not a picture of an experience but is the experience.” Do you agree with that statement and has that outlook reflected on you?

Yeah, but it’s not something I think about all the time, it’s more subconscious. I’m not creating representations of the world; I’m creating those worlds themselves. That’s why I use 1:1 scale and why I started to work on monumental sculptures. It started with the vocal cords of the prehistoric creatures and as with any musical instrument, scale effects the sound so I wanted it to be the actual scale in order to hear the actual sound. My goal was to recreate the physical experience of encountering those prehistoric creatures, so they needed to be 1:1 scale. There’s a big difference between looking at something and feeling something, that’s why I’m so interested in using sound because it’s very easy for us today to understand visual things, but we have less understanding about how sound affects us. It’s much more visceral and powerful and you can touch people’s emotions much more directly.

During my research into the shamanic world for my Ecstasies shows, I learnt that some experts believe that the prehistoric wall paintings in caves could have been made by shamans as a result of specific ceremonies. During these ceremonies, shamans would have called animal spirits living in the underworld, behind the walls of the cave. Maybe the walls of the caves were considered to be membranes, elastic skins stretched between the human world and the spiritual world. The shamans would have seen these spirits shadows from inside the cave on the walls and would have painted them. This would have resulted in the wall painting that we know. If this is true, this means that in these times, art had a very specific function. I feel that maybe art should be thought of as having more of a function today, maybe it should come back to the heart of our lives. Maybe we should connect again to it spiritually or at least bring it back to the centre of our lives as humans.

Unlike Rothko’s work which is usually shown in dimly lit spaces, your exhibitions vary widely; from ultra clean spaces that could be described as a science lab meets the Apple store, through to acidic yellow in Echoes, to plunging visitors into the darkness and unknown of Birth Canal. As you intend for the pieces to be seen as they are presented, what issues does this cause when working with institutions or collectors who may acquire just one piece of work, or if the work is on public display?

It’s something I’ve had to work on over the years because obviously, when I think about the shows originally, they are ecosystems; the pieces are all dependent on each other and on the space. However, now that I’ve been progressing, I have a better understanding of how pieces may have a life after the original exhibitions, whether being alone, in small groups, or alongside contemporaries. The historical significance of the space can also shape the show, and even if I’m using existing work in a new space, it’s about reinvesting in the new space and recreating strong experiences. I feel there’s a pressure in art to have people understand what you are doing, whereas I feel people should experience it for themselves and interpret it in their own way.

Do you think this attitude has an effect on how your work is perceived?

In my latest series of work, Mist at C L E A R I N G, in Brussels and in High Tide at Pompidou, I was trying to crystallise the narratives into the works themselves rather than relying too much on the space. That’s a really interesting challenge for me; giving the artwork more autonomy and for the works to somehow encapsulate their own mystery without having to be part of a wider landscape. In any case, I feel it’s really interesting as a lot of my series have obviously been separated whether in collections, or at biennials, or group shows, so it’s quite thrilling to show them sometimes in a new context as it gives them a whole new life away from their original ecosystem. I didn’t fully understand this at the beginning of my career but now I realise that I need to make sure that they carry the same power when they are alone.

Ecstasies, exhibition view. Kunstverein, Hamburg 2019 Photo: Julia AndréoneCourtesy the artist, C L E A R I N G New York/Brussels — Ecstasies, exhibition view.
Kunstverein, Hamburg 2019
Photo: Julia Andréone
Courtesy the artist, C L E A R I N G New York/Brussels

You’ve had quite a steep trajectory in the art world, not many people can claim to have achieved as much as you have at a relatively young age. From the group show at Château de Versailles, public sculptures in places such as the High Line, your solo show FOXP2 at Palais de Tokyo, or being nominated for the prestigious Marcel Duchamp prize, I could go on…. Which of these achievements or career landmarks has felt the most gratifying?

First of all, it’s been amazing, and I feel really humbled to show at all those places and museums, and it’s a good challenge to have to keep up with expectations. However, the most gratifying thing has been to work with all these different teams all around the world, whether with museum teams, fabricators, craftsmen. It’s fascinating to meet and work with all these people who are ‘behind the scenes’; people whose stories you never get to hear, a lot of people have amazing skills and crafts and it’s just exciting to be able to benefit from their combined experience and knowledge.

You recently unveiled your version of the Lady Dior bag as part of the next instalment of artists to create their own vision for the famous bag. True to form, you came at this from a completely different angle to everyone else who has been invited to do this previously. Can you talk a little about what you envisaged for the project and the materials you used?

When I was offered this project, the first thing I made sure about was that it wasn’t directly applying my work to a bag. I wanted to be able to have full freedom on what the bag would actually look like and use the same process I would use for one of my sculptures. Dior said yes, of course, and it was amazing to work with their team with their knowledge of materials, production processes, craft…. One thing that I wanted to develop in this project was a material that would be biodegradable and organic. Working with Dior allowed me to have access to amazing facilities and a level of experimentation that I don’t have access to in my studio.

I saw a talk a few years ago about prehistoric flint stones and a lot of them looked brand new, like they’d never been used. We think they were used to cut meat, yet some looked unused, so maybe we have been wrong about their use, maybe they were used to show off skills; how good you were at sculpting that stone or choosing the right stone for that. I remember the lecturer said maybe it was like the designer bag or luxury item of that time. I really loved the idea that prehistoric men were showing that they could be a good partner with their luxury flint stone. This led me to think about what a stone bag might look like, maybe one made out of marble…. From there, I went to Pompeii and visited the Museum of Archaeology in Naples and they had an amazing collection of glass and stone pieces. One was sculpted out of quartz and alabaster and looked almost like a skin, so I became obsessed about how this hard material could look like a living thing.

As part of the brief was to create the Lady Dior bag, I had to check with Dior about how far I could push it. They were really open. I took the bag and imagined it in a wind tunnel so it became highly abstracted. It took some time to develop the material, it wasn’t convenient or comfortable to do this in stone, and we developed the idea of 3D printing the bag in bio resin that is respectful of the environment. At first, it was just for the prototype and then when we looked at it, the lines that were created in the process looked almost like a fabric. It had a silky quality to it that made it connect to not only fashion but it also looked like marble it so connected it to the world of sculpture. From there, we tested different textures, for example, I wanted the handle to feel really soft so it has a rubbery feel to the material. We worked tirelessly on the shape as I wanted to make it feel like it had an impossibility to how it was standing. We worked with an aeronautical engineer so we could push it to its limits and get that feel like it was in motion.

You are used to working with artisans to create sculptures be it in bronze, or resins; how was it working with the famed Dior Ateliers?

It was really interesting because some things are very close to what I have to think about as we’re both making highly finished objects. That’s talking from a purely production point of view, of course, but on the other hand, there were many differences. They have to create these wearable objects with an extreme level of detail and finish, so understanding a bit more about what details change the story of the work and how they work with craftsman who are amongst the last of their kind was fascinating.

Having studied textiles prior to your time at the Royal College of Art, was fashion itself an interest of yours or did this area of study come from the creation and manipulation of the materials themselves?

My interest in fashion actually came from drawing really as I studied textiles prior to studying industrial design. I was specialising in pattern design so we did a lot of traditional drawing classes every week. Still today, I draw my sculptures before any production process happens. I work with teams who help me translate my drawings into physical objects. You could say that’s quite strange for someone who’s now known as a sculptor to not work directly in 3D.

With the Dior collaboration under your belt and a keen interest in fashion, can we expect any wearable projects from you in the future?

Yeah, why not? I mean it depends on the opportunities that come up but of course I’m interested. I like to keep an open mind about what could be possible.

What is coming in 2020 for you?

I’m working on a large-scale exhibition at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Denmark in which I will be part of a group show on mythology that will also include a lot of historical work. I’m showing a part my series of work that I showed at Pompidou. I’m also exhibiting the large The Dead piece from my Mist show in Riga, Latvia again in a completely different context. It will be interesting as it’s a warehouse type place that used to store the shipping containers from the ships coming off the Baltic sea, which is one of the most polluted seas. I’ve also been researching Latvian mythologies to connect my work to local history.

In June, I’ll be in Holland where I’m doing a project in a nature reserve based on a peat bog where they found a lot of preserved and mummified bodies. There’s since been stories of spirits and ghosts coming from the findings. It seems that the soil there has magical properties. It preserves bodies and produces spirits. I’m developing a new sculpture for this specific outdoor context.

In September, I’m showing my Cleopatra and Black Mamba pieces from Echoes as part of the biennial in Belgrade. I’m excited because it’s been a little while since I’ve shown these works and it’s one of my first pieces so it’s nice sometimes to revisit the past works. Then finally, I have a large outdoor commission that I can’t talk about too much yet and I’ll finish the year with an exhibition at my gallery C L E A R I N G, in their New York space.

High Tide (The Dancer I, The Dancer II, The Dancer III & IV) Centre Pompidou, 2019 Photo: Julia AndréoneCourtesy the artist, C L E A R I N G New York/Brussels — High Tide
(The Dancer I, The Dancer II, The Dancer III & IV)
Centre Pompidou, 2019
Photo: Julia Andréone
Courtesy the artist, C L E A R I N G New York/Brussels

Marguerite Humeau

Marguerite Humeau - Art's Paleontologist

instagram