Portfolio EN — Portfolio - Natalianne Boucher

Natalianne Boucher
Visual artist and filmmaker

Path, triptych 2 (extract), 2024, charcoal on paper 30x60cm

Representing the perception of time through images and movement is a subject I've been pursuing since my studies (ENSAD, Paris, Cinéma d'animation). My early work in urban space (video-dance, film, performance, drawing) laid the foundations for a multidisciplinary practice in still and moving images. The meditative, offbeat views of Bill Viola, David O'Reilly, Tatiana Trouvé and Beckett's theater infuse my memoir Perceiving Time, from repetition to the absurd, and continue to inspire me. For a decisive year, I lived on an island with an arid climate. I got to know its terrain well, its eroded, desolate, superb landscapes. I observed the natural elements (wind, sand, rock, flora and fauna) and their relationship to time, on a scale all their own. The natural and human histories of this desert condense the harshness of the climate and the erosive wind, the stages of settlement, but also the thoughtless exploitation of resources up to contemporary mass tourism. A common history, in fact, representative of what's happening in many other parts of the world. Today, I work with charcoal and photography on the motif of this bare island, but with a thousand faces. The figure of the path and the aesthetics of the portrait are used with the lights, textures, colors and scales of these tamed landscapes. I approach this work as an allegory of our world, where nature, now being destroyed at breakneck speed, remains essential to humans, who have always sublimated it through the arts. At the same time, I'm developing a short animated fiction film (charcoal on paper) that gives another form to this human paradox by inscribing it in a film.

PROJECTS, SELECTION 2025-14

Exhibition view, Chemin, Le Hublot, 2024, Ivry s/Seine, curation J-P.Pélissard

Exhibition view, Appareiller, Palais de Tokyo, 2015, Paris, curation M.Partouche et C.Strasser

2023-25 PATH

_{Triptych series, charcoal on velin paper 30x60cm}

Chemin, triptyque1, 2023, Fusain sur papier. 30x60cm collection particulière

Détails

The figure of the path is proposed in the form of triptychs where the images follow each other like the unfolding of a walk. I am interested in mountain landscapes and desert valleys. The research in the studio on the imprints of time on this landscape, its epaces, the absence of the human figure and its echoes is based on field notes (sketches, photographs) and imagination.
The path follows from one series to the next in these arid landscapes, which have a large-scale texture that resembles the texture of skin.
These landscapes are seen as a testimony to the violence humans have inflicted on each other and on their natural environment, but also as a testament to their resilience. Shaped by the repetition of human and animal passageways, the path can avoid the complications of the terrain or confront them.

2023-25 THE ERODES

_{Séries (20), photography on paper, 2023-25, Ed.15}

Les Érodées: Caima, Gayría, Loma Negra 2022-24

Shot in long exposure, the aesthetics of these images suggest those of portraiture. By systematizing the framing and long exposure of the photograph, the mountains and volcanoes are studied as sculptural entities, creating a dialogue between the natural history of the place and that of human beings

2022 LOCATIONS I

_{Series (12), charcoal on laid paper, 15x30cm}

Location I: 1,2,3,11

Research into soil erosion. The light is uniform, with no cast shadows, no direction of rays to indicate a specific time of day, giving a timeless aspect of the traces of time, with forms that are close to the texture of a skin.

2025 YOUR FIRE

_{Animation, charcoal et digital, 12mn. In development. Direction, art direction. Co-written with Guillaume Le Pape, actor in the film.}

Synopsis: A firefighter leaves a forest fire and calls his parents' home from a phone booth. As night falls, his ambivalent relationship with fire comes to life in this last quiet exchange with his mother before his arrest.

Twenty years ago, environmental issues were making headlines, at the same time as telephone booths were disappearing from public spaces. In the past, or at the movies, everyone has felt the impression of the phone booth’s transparent yet cramped space, halfway between private and public. It represents the turning point of our times. In development / Search of production.

2023 THE BLAME (musicvideo)

_{Animation 2d and pixillation, 4’30}

_{Watch the film}

Music video for Bob Moses (Domino Records). Art direction, image, animation and co-directed with Owen Brown.
Synopsis: A man-grafiti searches for his lost partner through the walls of the city. Urban landscapes accompany his thoughts. Why did she leave? Whose fault is it?

The pixilation work for the sets allowed me to express the character’s solitude. Repeated in a loop, the micro-movements of the backgrounds accompany the imprisonment of the drawn animation, blurring the line between stop-motion and digital effects.

2020-22 [SIC]

Photography on paper

[SIC] Sweet Disaster, 2022, d’après la pièce de et avec Guillaume Le Pape

[SIC] Là où nous sommes, 2021, d’après la pièce de Charlotte Braun, avec R. Crivellari

[SIC] Aeon, 2021, d’après la pièce de Clément Debailleul, avec Aragorn Boulanger

[Sic] was initiated when the Là où nous sommes company invited me to the Cube studio-théâtre for a research project on stage writing. I acted as an “outside viewer”, giving feedback to directors and actors during the creative process. The series capture the meticulous slowness and repetition of the research work and the spectator’s view I chose long exposure to form a quotation of a chosen lapse of time that allows us to revisit the source work. The project has been pursued through diferent collaborations in the performing arts.

2016 Lunakid - Waking up (videoclip)

_{Animation 2d et rotoscopie, 1’30)}

_{Voir le film}

Synopsis: Nobody knows who he is. His memory is fragile, he lives in a cave but composes his music on digitized interfaces. A sort of reclusive sage, ill-suited to his world, Lunakid is a hybrid character, a musician before he was human.

An animated series project for Berlin musician Lunakid (Label Soulpunx), whose first episode was produced in rotoscopy and 2d animation.

2014 CONTINUUM

_{Film and animation 3d/2d, 9mn15}

_{Watch the film}

Synopsis: A choreographed fiction that explores our perception of time and space with the symbol of sand. The spectators are invited into the dance through a play of mirrors between the scenic and cinematographic spaces.

« Bringing these choreographies to life with a pictorial gesture. (...) It's basically a video-painting that she offers us, a living tableau.. »
Jean-Luc Monterosso, Director of Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Arte video night 2015 screening

Festivals, selection: Cinemafest, Young Creator award, Mexique / San Francisco Dance Film Fest. Student award / Laiff Fest. Experimental award, nominated for direction award / Arte Video Night /Pépites du Net Canal+ / Mecal, Barcelone / Téhéran ISF / New dance cinema, NYC / Paris short film Fest / CineDans, Amsterdam / CDCN 94 / Coll. Suisse de la Danse (...). Ensad & Scotto Productions