At the end of the spiral, an encounter
between mind and earth

And yet the landing is not forced; it’s invited and aerial.
It is only on leaving the spiral that the obvious becomes apparent. Landing does not require a specific destination. It is simply a matter of crossing the air to put your feet down in your thoughts and count your memories.

Reciprocal snapshots
A banal memory
is a shared memory

In this spirit of displacement, so intimately linked to the spiral, Marie suggests that we settle, both in our memory and in its banality, and let ourselves be guided by the thread, which takes us along the spool, as if following a path slowly created by our intuition.

Without a sound, I settle
on the solidified air

Landing as a necessity of the concrete. This brings figuration onto the yarns. The abstraction of the spool is compressed, leaving space for clear, nearly raw images.

I’m discovering in my memory
an unsuspected, inconspicuous
coherence
faced with the colours of my lives

And so, the thread creates both structure and ambiguity, it becomes the material and the aim. The black and white memories impose themselves on colours, like a touch of the past in the present. With her title, “L’air sous mes pieds”, so significant for her, Marie in fact gives us a glimpse of her childhood, from her slender silhouette, falling all the time – as if too far off the ground – to the artist she is today, who walks on air to create her memories and inspiration. This year started in Brazil and Mexico, where projects made way for ambitions, where the Parisian spiral took on new energy, where it entangled Sophie in Brazil and myself in Mexico, like a triangle of inspiration, of tenderness and friendship, to finally land in New York.

One more plane
customs, baggage
who is at the end of the line?

Cities, characters, are gathered on the weaving, like instantaneous stages on the thread of life. These works do not bear a frame. A memory is never fixed. It certainly settles in its presence but can vary as it likes, takes the shape of the moment and the meaning we wish to give to it. It is also strange how memories full of people can leave us with a profound sense of solitude. As if the perception of our world, the distance we have from certain moments we experienced, again immerse us in our intimate decision of having wanted to experience them, in our isolation that forces us to make so many choices. And yet it is only exile that helps us recall the endearment of the obvious.

–Lorraine de Thibault

Alexander Berggruen is pleased to present Marie Hazard: L’air Sous Mes Pieds. Curated by Sophie de Mello Franco. Text by Lorraine de Thibault.