Portfolio EN — Portfolio - Natalianne Boucher

Natalianne Boucher
Visual artist and filmmaker

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

Representing time through images and movement is a subject I've been researching since my graduate studies (ENSAD, Paris, Cinéma d'animation). My first works in the urban space (video-dance, film, performance, drawing) traced the lines of a multidisciplinary practice in still and moving images. The meditative, offbeat views of Bill Viola, David O'Reilly, Tatiana Trouvé and Beckett's theatre 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, closer to my interest in nature. I got to know its terrain well, its eroded, desolate and superb landscapes. I observed the natural elements (wind, sand, rock, fauna and flora) and their relationship with time, on a scale all their own. The natural and human histories of this piece of desert condense the harshness of the climate and the erosive wind, the stages of settlement, but also the thoughtless exploitation of resources, right up to contemporary mass tourism. A banal story, in fact, representative of what is happening in many other parts of the world. I now work in 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 to play with the light, textures, colours and multiple scales of these tamed landscapes. I see this work as an allegory of our world, in which nature is essential to mankind, which has always sublimated it and yet is destroying it at breakneck speed. At the same time, I'm working on a short animated fiction film (charcoal on paper) that gives another form to this human paradox by making it part of a film.

PROJECTS, SELECTION 2025-14

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

Exhibition vew, 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 aesthetic of these images suggests that of the portrait. By systematising the framing and the long exposure of the photograph, I want to show a presence other than a human face.

The mountains are studied as entities, ‘natural monuments’ whose sculptural aspect invites an animistic viewpoint that brings the natural history of the place into dialogue with that of humans.

2022 LOCATIONS I

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

Location I: 1,2,3,11

Research into charcoal treatment of textures created by soil erosion. The light is uniform, with no cast shadows and no direction of rays to indicate a specific time of day.

This research, carried out in the field and then in the studio, enabled us to find locations for Path and The Erodes series and to develop them into large formats. It is a preparatory series.

2025 YOUR FIRE

_{Animation, charcoal et digital, 12mn. In development. Directed and co-written with Guillaume Le Pape, author of the original script and actor in the film.}

Synopsis
As night falls, a firefighter leaves operations on a forest fire to call his family from a phone box. The discussion turns confrontational when his mother accuses him of being responsible for yet another fire that threatens thei family.

Twenty years ago, the subject of the environment was making headlines in the news, at the same time as the telephone box was disappearing from the public space. In the past or at the cinema, everyone has experienced the impression of the phone box as a space that is both transparent and cramped, halfway between private and public. It represents the turning point of our times.

In search of production, development aid, residency(ies).

2023 THE BLAME (musicvideo)

_{Animation 2d and pixillation, 4’30}

_{Watch the film}

Clip musical pour le duo Canadien Bob Moses (Domino Records). Co-réalisation avec Owen Brown. D.A, image, animation.
Synopsis: Un homme-grafiti part à la recherche de sa partenaire perdue à travers les murs de la ville. Les paysages urbains accompagnent ses pensées. Pourquoi est-elle partie ? À qui la faute ?

Le travail de pixillation pour les décors m’ont permis d’exprimer la solitude du personnage. Répétés en boucle, les micros mouvements des décors accompagnent l’emprisonnement de l’animation dessinée et brouille les pistes entre l’effet de la stopmotion et le numérique.

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] is a photographic project that began when the Là où nous sommes company invited me to the Cube studio-théâtre to work on a piece of writing for the stage. I acted as an ‘outsider’, giving feedback to the directors and actors during the creative process by taking on the role of spectator. The first series was made to capture the meticulous slowness and repetition of the research work, but also the attentive slowing down of the spectator.

I chose long exposure photography because it gives consistency to the image, which is out of sync with the work being viewed. While paying homage to it by quoting it over a chosen period of time in the known piece, it allows us to revisit it.

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