Galerie Maubert, Paris

Nathalie Talec

Galerie Maubert presents a solo show by Nathalie Talec, whose work, since the 1980s, has blended art and science, fiction and reality, to explore perception, transformation, and identity. Inspired by polar exploration, she creates fragmented narratives through collage, video, sculpture, and drawing. For ARTORAMA, she focuses on childhood as a space for exploration, fiction, and (re)invention of the identity.

 

Talec sees the child as the ultimate explorer—navigating the unknown, the limitless, absorbing images, and constructing the self through imagination. One of the mannequins displayed in the booth is draped in an Aubusson tapestry printed with Talec’s iconic 1980s self-portrait as a polar explorer. This blanket-tapestry acts as a protective refuge, a space where identity can retreat and be reinvented.

 

This act of enveloping oneself in images reflects Talec’s broader practice, rooted in visual accumulation, where she intertwines medieval engravings, scientific illustrations, Inuit children’s drawings, polar iconography… Drawings, collages, and sculptures—many conceived for ART-O-RAMA or presented for the first time—reveal this process of “mental sedimentation’’ to build stratified narratives.

 

Through disguise and theatrical self-representation, Talec also challenges traditional gender archetypes, particularly in her reinterpretation of traditionally male figures like the scientist or explorer. In FRIGO EUROPA (1983), she appears as a polar scientist with oversized glasses, standing near a cruise ship in Marseille that bears her initials. In Gravité (1983), Barbie dolls drift through the windows of Galeries Lafayette to the rhythm of an invented song, merging playfulness and satire.

https://www.galeriemaubert.com/