Séverine Chauveau was born in Angers, France and lives and works in Reunion Island. Her work questions the materiality of photography and its relationship to time and object. It is published in several magazines (Photo Trouvé Magazine, Aeonian Magazine, and Assembla Magazine) and shown at the University of Reunion in October 2024. It was also presented in July 2023 at the International Festival of Photography in Barcelona in two group exhibitions: "Playing against exhibitions", and "Ausstellungseröffnung" on the theme of materiality in photography at the Institute of Photographic Studies of Catalonia.
A book published by Éditions Azalées and directed by Patrick Singaïny , a Reunionese essayist, was published in 2013 following the double exhibition of photographs Images hantées - Anté Images presented in St Denis de la Réunion. Séverine Chauveau studied for a bachelor's degree in visual arts at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne.
I started at Agora two years ago with a collective mentorship, which was decisive in my artistic journey. I was led to radically deepen my work from a technical point of view, but also, and perhaps above all, to think hard about the meaning and message I wanted to convey. The criticism and advice I received from other artists was always kind and helpful. Listening to them, discovering their world in detail and sharing this adventure together is a wonderful experience. Some of them have become friends with whom I still talk! As a result, my Deliquescence project took shape, and the University of La Réunion invited me to exhibit it. I then continued at Agora with an individual mentorship led by Pablo Giori to accompany me on this important project. His experience and skills in a wide range of fields enabled me to delve even deeper into my work, as well as communication, curating and other aspects of organizing an exhibition that are not always familiar to artists. Mentorship, whether collective or individual, is also a way of gaining a better understanding of how galleries, festivals, publishing and communication work, and of learning how to better direct one's career as an artist. Today, Deliquescence is also published in 3 magazines.
I would add that having broken English is not a hindrance :) There's a lot of help and kindness from everyone on this subject. I've made progress in this area too, and it opens a lot of doors!
Featured Exhibition
Through an exploration of the materiality of photography and its close relationship with time, the artist questions her own relationship with memory, remembrance, and forgetting. By exploring the plastic boundaries of photography, Séverine Chauveau invites us to view the medium in an unusual light: volume, texture, movement, hybridization, video—approaches that challenge the conventional limits of photography.
About the project: Deliquescence
Photography is above all for me a material to be manipulated and an exploration of my relationship to time, to disappearance, memory and forgetting. Photography is the perfect medium for this question, because time is doubly part of her: time encapsulated in her material and time that she seems to retain on a piece of paper, that of memory. Experimenting with photographic material therefore allows me to move intimately in my questioning and to make, in its very material, small "souvenir objects".
A few years ago, my visual arts teacher, handing me a box, whispered in my ear: "Photography is your medium. One day you will make something of it." In the box, 188 portraits of anonymous people. This box had been deposited for her at the Parisian high school, where she was then teaching, in 1983; she never knew by whom. 188 looks that have haunted me for a long time. A box that I opened from time to time, scrolling through the faces one by one, always asking myself: who were they? What was their name? What were their tragedies, their joys and their secrets? Does anyone, somewhere, remember it?