Anecdota - secret stories

Socheata Aing is one of the three winners of this year's Mezzanine Sud prize, which Les Abattoirs is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Following on from her immersive installation Le Jardin, designed for the Mezzanine Sud exhibition, Socheata Aing invites us to an evening of listening to the writing and voices of her guests: art critic and curator Horya Makhlouf, and artists Nicolas Puyjalon, Marilina Prigent and Kirana Juan. Each of them will be reading personal and poetic texts on the theme of transmission and the impalpable link that connects them to places, people and precious memories. Socheata Aing will present ‘Pilote de ligne’, an original performance in the form of a story about childhood and family.

Biography:

Socheata Aing's performances are the result of a mixture of harmoniously combined elements that are deeply enriched by the practice of writing. The artist feeds each new performance with a story, very often a personal one, told through writing in her Petites mémoires. This collection, which is regularly revived at public readings, also provides the framework for her performances, inviting people to confide in her. Because Socheata Aing's performances are about intimacy and publicity, about memories and emotions that are entirely personal and at the same time very common: the sadness of mourning, the sweetness of love, childhood memories, the anger of adulthood, cultural heritage and its clichés.

The artist establishes immediate communication with his audience through the rituals in which they are invited to take part, made up of simple, everyday gestures such as chopping onions, eating a meal, dancing and clapping hands. In these rituals, several worlds coexist: the world of sport, the world of celebration, or the world of religious tradition. This communication allows the artist to open up the near to the far, to avoid remaining in a form of autarkic intimism, but instead to make a world of her own stories and emotions, and to welcome otherness into it.

Graduated from the Institut supérieur des arts et du design de Toulouse in 2019, Socheata Aing lives and works between Toulouse and Neuchâtel. She presented her work at the Capc in Bordeaux in 2023, as well as at the Musée des arts asiatiques Guimet in 2022, at the Maison Salvan in Labège in 2023, at the Festival des Artistes chez l'habitant in Fiac in 2023, and in several other festivals and cultural venues. In 2024 she will win the Mezzanine Sud prize awarded by Les Abattoirs, Musée-Frac Occitanie, Toulouse.

Horya Makhlouf is an art historian, art critic and co-founder of the Jeunes Critiques d'Art collective. She has also been artistic coordinator and curator of special projects at the Palais de Tokyo since 2024. She writes for artists, magazines and art institutions, and has taken part in the podcasts L'esprit critique (Mediapart), PQSD (Jeunes Critiques d'Art) and Verni-es (Projets Media). She recently curated ‘Une Affaire de famille’ (CAC Passerelle, Brest, 24.10.2024 - 25.01.2025), the Nuit Blanche itinerary at Césure (Paris, 2023), and co-curated ‘LA ELLE’, an in situ work by Renée Levi (with Hugo Vitrani, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2024).

Marilina Prigent is a filmmaker and storyteller. Born in Mendoza, Argentina, she studied at the National University of Cuyo before continuing her training in France at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier, where she graduated in 2013. Her artistic work is based on collecting archives, letters, photographs and oral testimonies, which she incorporates into her videos and installations.

She has a passion for micro-history, exploring the life stories and events associated with forgotten characters, those who escape the mainstream of history. As part of her residency at the Quartier Culturel, she is developing a project closely linked to the site, based around the story of Saint Dymphna, patron saint of Malévoz. Through historical and memorial traces, the project aims to question the way in which this legend resonates and persists within the institution.
It also explores how this initial narrative is transformed and reinvented through the eyes of each individual.

The work of Toulouse-based artist Nicolas Puyjalon (b. 1983) is expressed particularly through performance.
The artist begins by defining a territory with adhesive tape, then erects shaky edifices out of salvaged materials - a joyful, colourful jumble - to perform actions, dramatic and grotesque quests, doomed to failure and ridicule. His body, the main tool in his work, in keeping with the tradition of the medium, shows clumsiness, but also obstinacy and effort, and is finally stricken by exhaustion.

A poetic vein, tinged with humour and melancholy, emerges from these actions, operations that were unfeasible from the outset, and which can be found in the scores that Nicolas Puyjalon creates using several techniques: writing, drawing and collage. Without giving in to representation, the compositional elements of these scores - autonomous pieces that adapt to different contexts of reactivation - describe an imagined and sensitive space and allow movement to be spatialised, based on the analogy between the sheet and space.

Kirana Juan is a visual artist living and working in Toulouse. They graduated from the Institut Supérieur des Arts et du Design de Toulouse (isdaT) in 2024 and is a member of the Graviè-re collective.
Their work begins with writing and develops through performance, installation and publishing.
They deal with issues arising from his different identities and intersections, starting from the intimate in order to weave links with the collective. Through a hybrid of everyday, inclusive, theoretical and poetic language, They seek to crystallise the poetry that comes from the raw.