baudoin lebon presents Maya Mercer and Juliette-Andréa Elie from Friday January 22 to Saturday February 20, 2021.
Maya Mercer is a Franco-American artist. Daughter of radical English dramatist, playwright, and screenwriter David Mercer, Maya grew up between London, Paris, and Los Angeles. Self-taught as a visual artist, Mercer has always lived in a narrative world, experiencing ?life as theater? from early childhood. She calls herself a regionalist ?photocinema? artist. Mercer now lives and works in Northern California where she directs mostly teenagers in visual stories inspired by the social conditions of the rural American Far West. Her work has been shown in galleries, museum exhibitions and art fairs throughout North America and Europe.
"Mercer has become an adopted daughter of the Wild West. Living as she does in the interior of California, that vast and varied state, a country within a country, has its grip on her entire consciousness. She finds it a First World within a First World ? and a Third World within a Third World as well.
Mercer?s subjects are young, beautiful, tragic and playful, and strangely removed from time even as they reflect contemporary stresses and historic memories. While her art echoes the decadence of late-19th century precursors, however, it also looks ahead to a new, perilous age of sensuality, confusion, and encroaching dystopia. In this regard Maya Mercer is less hedonist than oracle, less Salome than Cassandra. Her work is no indulgence; it is a warning.? Peter Frank
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Born in 1985, Juliette-Andréa Elie graduated from the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Nantes Métropole (DNSEP 2010) and studied engraving techniques at Concordia University in Montreal. Winner of several awards (Mentoring Les Filles de la Photo 2020, Photography Fair Fotofever 2016), she carried out her research on the representation of landscape and the anthropocene during her residency at the Cité internationale des arts in 2016. Her work was recently exhibited in 11 stations of the Parisian subway during the festival Paris Expériences Photo organized by Fisheye magazine. Last year, the photographer was selected for the annual photographic commission of the TCI - Théâtre de la Cité Internationale (Paris), and her sculpted photographs were exhibited in Shangai (China) to represent the young French scene. Since 2016, she regularly develops practical learning program with institution like the Cent-Quatre-Paris.
Her work is presented in solo and group exhibitions; she regularly participates in international fairs such as BIENVENUE ART FAIR (2019), Paris Photo (2017), the AIPAD NEW YORK (2018, 2017) and SP FOTO in SAO PAULO (2016).
