About the Exhibition

“Through Laure Prouvost’s surrealist work, the visitor embarks on a mesmerizing journey, flying South and then nesting at the Moody, referencing Houston’s unique location on the North American migratory paths for birds. The disruptive presence of reality is introduced through an installation that evokes oil spills and their catastrophic consequences for the environment,” explains curator Frauke V. Josenhans. “Prouvost’s vision highlights some of the critical issues of our time, as seen through the lens of eco-feminism, and at the same time asks the visitor to forego set expectations and let the mind levitate in a space of boundless freedom.”

Glass-blown birds nesting in the exhibition galleries, hybrid creatures floating between earth and sky, tapestries that evoke matriarchal figures, grotto-like tunnels leading from the dark into light, and other surprises, are part of the fantastical universe created by Laure Prouvost for the Moody Center for the Arts. With its distinctive design by Diogo Passarinho Studio, the exhibition juxtaposes an ethereal world with a grim, industrial landscape.

Welcomed by a sprinkling indoor water fountain, visitors enter Prouvost’s strange world to immediately experience the evocative power of nature, bodies, and language, guided by a large tapestry. The first encounter includes the video Every Sunday, Grand Ma, projected in the Media Art Gallery. A recurrent protagonist in Prouvost’s artistic universe, Grand Ma transforms into a human bird in this video work, leaving the dark grounds behind her to fly over the clouds, unbound and weightless like a celestial creature, looking at the world from a bird’s eye view.

As the visitor proceeds through the Brown Foundation Gallery, a bleak image of the Anthropocene unfolds, with its gloomy environment occupied by pipes, detritus of our consumerist society, and oil leaks. Virtual reality elements and videos introduce aspects of our digital age, and yet traces of nature are present, creating subtle points of connection as visitors find their way through oil puddles, dunes, and soil.

The Nest, a monumental structure between the two main exhibition galleries, evokes a natural bird habitat while functioning as a transitional space that visitors enter and cross before arriving at a utopian landscape that occupies the Central Gallery, filled with fog, a soft mountain to climb and rest upon, and levitating objects.

Overall, the exhibition conjures a compassionate, hopeful future where humans live as part of nature, rather than working against it. Every element, be it large or small, natural or manufactured, plays a role in helping us imagine a more productive and positive way to inhabit this world.

Laure Prouvost: Above Front Tears Nest in South will coincide with the conference of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS) taking place in Houston, November 9–11, 2023.

The exhibition Laure Prouvost: Above Front Tears Nest in South is curated by Frauke V. Josenhans, Curator, Moody Center for the Arts. The exhibition design is by Diogo Passarinho Studio. A selection of works and exhibition elements were originally produced for the exhibition The Fredriksen Commission: Laure Prouvost. Above Front Tears Oui Float, at the National Museum in Oslo, Norway, 2022.

The exhibition is made possible by the Moody Center for the Arts Founders Circle and the Elizabeth Lee Moody Excellence Fund for the Arts. Above Front Tears Nest in South is supported by Etant donnés Contemporary Art, a program of Villa Albertine."