Writing is drawing
The gallery lends to the Centre Pompidou-Metz an artwork by Thérèse Bonnelalbay on the occasion of the exhibition Writing is drawing.
Born from a conversation with the artist, poet and writer Etel Adnan (born in 1925), the exhibition explores our fascination for writing and its signs, and their proximity to the practice of drawing, contrasting the handwritten world with the digital world. This exhibition wishes to highlight the poetry of this “ancient knowledge” that is writing, through letters and manuscripts, but also graphic works from the collections of the Centre Pompidou, where the written word blends with the image, even disappears completely.
A nurse by trade, it was during meetings at the Marseille Communist Party that she began drawing in the 1960s. Found drowned in the Seine in 1980, she left behind an exceptional body of work. Often compared to Henri Michaux, her ideographic drawings in Indian ink are full of mystery. In 1967 she was part of the historical exhibition L’Art Brut at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Now present in numerous collections, including the Collection de l’Art Brut (Lausanne), the LaM (Villeneuve d’Ascq) but also in the abcd/Bruno Decharme collection (France), a dossier is devoted to her in the Fascicule de l’Art Brut n°11.