Ariane Toussaint

Ariane Toussaint creates site-specific textile installations that explore shifts in light and color, using patchwork techniques as a metaphor for mending and building narratives. Inspired by the textile traditions of the contexts in which she works, her projects often incorporate writing, craft-based learning and interactive elements. She received her degree in BA Photography at Royal Academy of Art The Hague (KABK) in 2020, and studied Textile Design at Central Saint Martins in London. Her work has been shown in various spaces in The Netherlands and abroad, such as Centre National Edition Art Image in Paris, Art Au Centre in Liège and U10 in Belgrade. She has received support from the Mondriaan Fonds and participated in Bucharest AiR. She also co-initiates the annual open studios program Bermuda Open in The Hague and is an assistant curator at the artist initiative The Balcony. "I like to tell stories and create installations around subjects that I believe to be relevant, such as domestic labour and the need for intimacy and tactility. I describe my process as giving meaning to fragments and making visible what has been invisibilised: individual memories, personal stories, and hidden narratives. This process translates in my approach to textile —in the way I create collections and patchworks, and text — in the way I compile research and write. Whereas in my process I aim at collecting and proceeding with the technique of assemblage, in presentation I look to enhance tactility and emotional power of materials. My practice is a constant back and forth between writing texts and visual narratives, collecting old books, materials and fabrics that carry a singular story and the crafting of objects, which are meant to be touched and manipulated. I play with the format of the book and twist the notions of textile and publication by making books out of printed textile. The domestic dimension of textile crafts to which I am deeply attached, as well as my labour performed as an educator of young children, led me to question the invisibilisation of the practices of ‘care’, largely carried out by women. Working on the debt of art in relation to domestic and women’s arts, on stories that have been invisibilised and attempting to place the artistic practice within the wider field of ‘care’ are my main aims, which resulted in my most recent book ‘A Textile Room’ and series of patchworks 'Ouvrages de Dames'."