Biography of Laure Prouvost
Since winning the prestigious Turner Prize in 2013, Laure Prouvost has cemented her position near the top of the international art scene with her witty and endearing video installations. Brilliantly exploring the entanglements of fictional truths and autobiographical reality, Prouvost's videos immerse the viewer and play with their perception, questioning the intersection between what is real and what is not. The artist often takes on the role of the unreliable narrator. She invents grandfathers and family histories, at once endorsing and denying an autobiographical reading of her work and avoiding the fate of so many female artists that are reduced to their personal histories.
Born in 1978 in France and being a French artist living in London, Laure Prouvost frequently thematizes language and communication in her video work, exploring the capacity of words to express concepts and the ability of sounds to articulate emotion. The artist does her own voice-overs in English, deliberately mispronouncing words in her native lilt. Indeed, Prouvost revels in (mis)translation. As the artist quips, "Words? I don't do words! For years, I misunderstood a lot of English words, and you go off-piste, your imagination steps in. If you misunderstand someone's art, you create a new art." Prouvost's works are conceived and dwell within this conceptual gap, this slippage between two languages, this space in which new insights and ideas surface.
Laure Prouvost studied film at Central Saint Martins and Goldsmiths. She was the winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2011 in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery and has had solo shows at numerous internationally renowned establishments including Tate Britain, the New Museum, New York, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Massively in demand around the world, Prouvost's editions and multiples perfectly capture the spirit of the artist's quirky and unique practice.
