Cloakroom

Our gaze enters Cloakroom, a strange changing room where skins, garments or sloughs lean against the wall. These jackets adorned with engraved brooches form a collection entitled Enveloppes. They transform the intimate space of a partially opened pseudo-cloakroom into a place where acts of changing, exchange, intimacy and temporary absence become visible. In this installation, very little is fixed, except for the coldness of the metal of the brooches and coat racks, and a few needles and chains scattered throughout the space. Everything else is ready to fade, crack and wither, from skins to shoes with strange shapes arranged on the walls and floor. This cloakroom is strewn with small soap sculptures mimicking functional everyday objects, ready to be grasped or worn. It is a deformed, grotesque and monstrous collection of fragrant forms that the window prevents us from smelling. The sculptures play with time: daylight bleaches them whereas night calms them. The installation invites attentive viewers to pass by again, to imagine scents, chromatic variations and cracks. Cloakroom displays a game of slow observation of the aging of materials.

Charlotte Delval works with sculpture and writing in various forms (installations, objects, in situ interventions, readings, self-publishing and sound recordings). She tackles sensuality, the dirtiness of bodies and desire, at the edge of the living and the non-living. Her preferred materials are water and soap.