Bertille Bak
Diverting on the usual representations of marginalized or otherwise “invisible” communities, Bertille Bak (born in Arras, France, in 1983) has developed a body of work staging populations or situations that she subverts with the close involvement of the protagonists themselves. Without a predefined script, the artist immerses himself in the lifestyle of a Gypsy community on the periphery of Paris, shoe shiners in La Paz, asylum seekers residing in Pau, and shrimp peelers in Morocco. Together, they create fictional narratives, interweaving performance art with makeshift theatre; stories that disrupt the established order and the sense of inevitability.
In 2023, she was nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize. She won the Mario Merz Prize in 2019 and was in residency at Fondation Pinault (Lens, 2019–2020). Her solo exhibitions were presented, amongst others, at the EMST (Athens, 2024), the Jeu de Paume (Paris, 2024), the Louvre-Lens (2023), the Merz Foundation (Torino, 2022), the La Criée (Rennes, 2022), the FRAC PACA (Marseille, 2017), the Grand Café Saint-Nazaire (2014), the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2012) and the MAC/Val (Ivry, 2011). [Source: VOX, 2024]
