BARBARA LÉON LECLERCQ
Name: Barbara Léon Leclercq
Age: 26
Home: Brussels
Birthplace: Bourg-la-Reine, France
Practice: Drawing, ceramic
Where does your practice originate from?
I think it doesn’t only come from the desire to tell stories, but more precisely from the fact of telling one version and then another one of the same story. As if we could build a path piece by piece, its forks and branches, leaving them open and malleable. In reality, this narrative approach to plastic work is the same as when I was a child, and resides, for example, in confusing anecdotes, myths and political, personal or fantasized histories.
What are the main topics you deal with in your practice?
Somewhere in between the notion of collapse and foundation. These are antinomic terms, but it’s this back-and-forth between imagining what we're based on and what we're
doomed to lose that generates a different way of relating to the world. Within this continuous passage, which can also be referred to as the ruin process, I'm convinced that by working it to the core, we'll be able to develop alternative versions.
How do you define your artistic research in three words?
Sharp, fertile, scattered.
What does the act of creating mean to you?
Plasticity is just a way of initiating something that wouldn't really have been possible
otherwise. To create something is to launch a teaser. It means to embrace the contours of speculation, in order to wrestle with common sense, to then open up exchanges and projections.
What do you stand for, both as an artist and a human being?
I believe being an artist is related to the tricky way of being moved and taking a step back. To be able to communicate. Maybe like a gatekeeper with the ability to open ways, draw alternatives and let it open to others? I’m standing for writing and rewriting our collective but also personal narratives because I do believe that what is political in that way is what is collectively desirable. Maybe it often takes seed in fiction after all? Among many other things, I can say that I'm in favour of deep changes and prolific results that we need to draw collectively. Finally, I wonder what would happen if collapse could also be approached in a prolific form. Imagining fluid and organic futures could mean organizing the fertile ground of the incoming ruins of capitalism.
Where do you find beauty?
In all things that encounter one another. In unexpected shapes and forms.
Photography by Noé Znidarsic