Clovis Maillet

Clovis Maillet (1981, France) has published La parenté hagiographique [Hagiographic Kinship] (2014) and Les genres fluides [Genderfluid] (2020). He has directed several issues of academic journals while conducting research on the uses of history in contemporary art (Witch TV, 2021; Un Moyen Âge émancipateur [An Emancipatory Middle Ages], with Thomas Golsenne, 2021). Clovis Maillet practices performance art and installation with Louise Hervé, and has been making films since the early 2000s. They have published Attraction Étrange [Strange Attraction] (2013), Spectacles sans objet [Pointless Shows] (2015) and L’lguane [The Iguana] 2018. He co-wrote the show Medieval Crack with the Foulles group.

His residency project invites us to think about a historical condition (that of women and gender minorities who think violence and live with the dead), starting from a specific bereavement (the death of a mother crushed by antifeminism and dissolved in the water of a river). The project unfolds in three political phases. Fare l’amore tutte le volte che si vuole is inspired by the struggle of the Movimento di Lotta Femminile, which fought for sexual and contraceptive freedom in the 1970s. Il lavoro di riproduzione evokes the 1980s, antifeminism, conjugal and intra-family violence. La ricostruzione is the re-emergence of feminism, illuminated by trans studies and community mourning.

Portrait © L. Charrier