“When we were kids my brother and I used to hang out at the Maeght Foundation,” laughs Sandra D. Lecoq. As a Cinderella of great art, from which women are too often absent, she has written her name among those of Nice’s unmissable talents, as we wrote in 2014. “People are always a bit reductive about what I do: a woman using fabrics and textiles to create things – rather stereotypical!” ironises the artist. By turns loquacious then unforthcoming but above all decidedly pragmatic, the woman who created a stir with her Penis Carpets – large penis-shaped mats it took her days to weave – then her H de Guerre (“warpath”) series featuring rude words believes art is to be lived, not theorised about. “I don’t set out to provoke. My career is more a series of slippages, in portrayal and vocabulary. At a certain point the phallus disappeared and I began exploring the cock of my surname, men’s ties and flowers.” Four years after Mourrons les oiseaux (“we’ll die the birds“) she returned this summer to Eva Vautier’s gallery with Autoportrait des autres en noir (“self-portrait of others in black“), some 30 portraits of friends, family and people who have marked her. Having sewn her workshop rags then substituted multi-coloured textiles for chassis and canvases, Lecoq now makes an against-the-grain pictorial gesture. It may have taken her 20 years to pluck up courage but she sees this as continuity rather than rupture. “When I was a student at Villa Arson my pro-conceptual peers thought I was behind the times. I see my work as all about painting and family.” So painting portraits means starting a new relationship with time. It’s taking risks, moving out of her comfort zone, driven by the desire that takes one forward. “But I don’t rule out doing more fabric pieces or H de Guerre; once I’ve started a series I never close it,“ she concludes.
Par Tanja Stojanov
Photo Jean-Michel Sordello
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