***ICE CREAM LACTOSE QUEEN***, 2021. HD UV print on Plexiglass, galalith synthetized by the artist from milk proteins, aluminium frame 107 x 73,5 cm, unique.

Fluidity, coexistence, transformation, care, harmony, infiltration. All these seem to be crucial concepts that emerge from the hybrid works of emergent artist Salomé Chatriot.

It appears somewhat futile to channel her practice and label it into strict categories. Yet, her works seem to embody a deep process of listening and experimentation as a leading thread fostering their raison d'être. Her keen attention to materials, the operating mechanisms of artificial entities, and the vital functions of human beings are brought together through an aesthetic approach that is at times dystopian but never dismissive. The outcome is the generation of a symbiotic environment where we find ourselves suspended between futuristic speculations and luscious materialisations of a profound and thoughtful vision. The artist's works are not objects to contemplate, but breathing beings with which to share primordial archetypes of knowledge. Existential reflections are moulded by using the resources that belong to our ever-changing present with the lyrical and delicate intention of making a recognition between perhaps only supposedly independent cosmologies attainable.

***CALCIUM THIRST***, 2021. Exhibition view, New Galerie, Paris (FR)
LEFT: ***SHE NEEDS MY PLASMA MORE THAN I DO***, 2021. HD UV print on Plexiglass, galalith synthetized by the artist from milk proteins, aluminium frame 79 x 98 cm, unique.
RIGHT: ***FEED MY THIRST***, 2021. HD UV print on Plexiglass, 215 x 295 cm, unique.

Would you like to introduce yourself and your practice? If you had to point out only three words, what would be the key terms that best outline your research?

I am a 25 year-old French contemporary artist, living between Paris and Lausanne. In my work, I create a future where Machines and Humans merge together in a delicate harmony. I explore physical and virtual spaces by building machines and installations where electronic sculptures and digital images coexist. Fascinated by the way science treats body[ies] through data-oriented objectivity, I use new technologies to shape a fluid, digital and precious identity.

My three words are: Metamorphosis, Breastfeeding and Machines.

***FRAGILE ECOSYSTEM***, 2018. Turbo Alternator, printed PVC, scuptural arcs, LED system, medical gloves, screens into the machine. Curated by Iseult Perrault & Léo Orta - LA TOTALE. Installation view, Les Moulins - Galleria Continua (FR)

How do the organic and the corporeal infiltrate the virtual dimension in your artistic vision? How do they coexist, and what is the discussion you aspire to trigger?

In 2018, I met a gigantic industrial machine, a sprawling turbo alternator that awakened under my caresses. I helped the Machine out of her lethargy with a set of soft medical systems brought out of my imagination. This first contact was not enough. We merged to create a spacetime destined to be dismantled, fragmented and reassembled under the aegis of the Machine’s fertile matrix: a fragile ecosystem. Fragile Ecosystem is a polymorphic universe and my (only personal) on-going series of work.

Dreaming of this universe as a perfect biometric harmony, we shape together an uncanny yet fantastic world where the living, the machines and the technology fuse to compose a vast cosmology, at the border of the real and the virtual. Through the coalescence of my breathing and heartbeat with interactive systems I create, the physical installation and the digital environment arise, echoing my symbiosis with the Machine. Suspended in equilibrium, I infect her systems with vital breath, carnal desire and empathic energy.

Thus, I do not make any distinction between organic, corporeal or virtual dimensions of my work: they all merge together. I also don’t aim to trigger any discussion or meta discourse about the realm of digital/real but rather show the audience my multilayered universe, Fragile Ecosystem. I prefer thinking about the interaction of those different layers instead of looking at their dichotomy. I like seeing machines as friends, even tentacular antique/futuristic nymphs that can help us be more respectful to the non-human by showing a form of reconciliation.

***Arlequin’s Nymphosis 2***, 2021. HD UV print on Plexiglass, aluminium, 132 x 310 cm, unique. Exhibition view, *Calcium Thirst*, New Galerie (Paris)

What are your main aesthetic inspirations, and how do you translate - or incorporate - them into your works?

Aesthetically speaking, I try not to look at digital images because I prefer being inspired by totally different mediums or my own imagination. It can sound cliché, but I really like (my) dreams as an inspiration and especially the transitions between scenes which can be very surrealistic. I have been writing them since I was 14, my two best friends and I were afterwards sharing the actual dreams and techniques to remember them. I really liked Paprika, a Japanese book then adapted into anime, mixing high technology and the subconscious.

Surprisingly, I nourish a fascination for science fiction as well as for classical theatre. One of the central characters of Fragile Ecosystem is Arlequin, nor for the aesthetics he radiates neither for his archetypal position in theatrical history; but for the few legends that revolve around him. They all converge towards a mysterious attitude and a status more synthetic than human. We learn notably that his skin is patched, like the creature of Dr. Frankenstein, and therefore I dedicated to him a series of plexiglass skins embedded with aluminum.

More than anything else, it is the industrial machines that inspire me the most. They embody the figure of the tentacular, metallic nymph, a kind of sleeping beauties who just want to wake up. Besides, when we, beings of flesh, sleep at night, they wake up to communicate and exchange fluids composed of molten magma. These are the thoughts that constitute my inspirations.

***OUR SYMBIOSIS INFECTED HER FERTILE SYSTEMS***, 2021. Stills from HD video, 7 min. Cinematographed by Louise Fauroux and Assisted by Thérèse Poiraud, Sound by Inès Cherifi, Commissionned by Unfinished Camp and HEK, Curated by András Szántó and Hans-Ulrich Obrist.

Would you like to tell us about your most recent projects and how your creative process unfolds when you start conceiving a new piece? Was there a crucial event in the evolution of your practice?

Recently, I just opened Calcium Thirst, my first solo show at New Galerie in Paris. Among other things, I presented there Our Symbiosis Infected her Fertile Systems, (2021), my latest film that I made this summer for the Unfinished Camp program run by The Shed Museum and commissioned by HEK in Basel. I was also selected for the first Biennale College Arte workshop in Venice, for my project While Merging Together, she turned into a Lactose Nymph.

All these pieces are different views of the same image: a machine in perpetual metamorphosis within my never-ending universe Fragile Ecosystem. Together, these three projects create a coherent and complete vision of my practice. They bring together all the mediums I use: moving images, interactive performance, sculpture, painting...all made up of agglomerates of milk, eggs, lung alveoli, liquid muscles, gaseous shells, delicate and fragile machines, as well as glittering spines.

I never really design an isolated piece so it's hard to describe the individual process. The ideas flow naturally to unfold the non-narrative story that I write as I go along. For example, I imagined While Merging Together, she turned into a Lactose Nymph, (2021) when I first met the Machine in 2018. Not as a concrete idea that I wrote down but rather as a thought in the form of single words: shell, nymph, fluids. At the time, I wasn't even consciously aware that I would be performing 4 hours in hyperventilation a year later, activating an interactive set of sculptures and moving visuals with my breath. But it was obvious in retrospect. I think this Fragile Ecosystem performance in 2019 was a crucial event in my practice indeed. I repeated it several times, until the first confinement during which I decided that I no longer wanted to activate only interactive systems with my breath, but also to encapsulate this breath in moving images. I thus created Breathing Patterns, (2020) a video diptych showing two organs animated by breathing data extracts recorded during a Fragile Ecosystem performance. I have been working with breathing for 6 years now, my ECAL diploma was an interactive, chain-reaction machine showing every user’s breath journey in a poetic translation. I think Distal Extension was already gathering a lot of the elements I still use.

***CALCIUM THIRST***, 2021. Exhibition view, New Galerie, Paris (FR)
LEFT: ***BREATHING PATTERNS***, 2020. Breath generated video diptych (no soundscape), 6 min each, quality HD to 4K.
RIGHT: ***SHE NEEDS MY PLASMA MORE THAN I DO***, 2021. HD UV print on Plexiglass, galalith synthetized by the artist from milk proteins, aluminium frame 79 x 98 cm, unique.

I also focused a lot on creating Galalith for 2 years, a plastic made out of milk that I presented for the first time during Calcium Thirst at New Galerie. It was very obvious for me to use eggs and milk, even before thinking about the metamorphosis process. Milk is very interesting as a maternal, sensual, sexual material that can still mold in one second. It is powerful, as a metamorphosis.

All these mechanisms constitute the genesis of Our Symbiosis Infected her Fertile Systems, (2021), divided into three parts: Artificial insemination with The Machine and our common breath, gestation and the Original Egg, then breastfeeding with milk and gasoline.

LEFT: ***SALOMÉ CHATRIOT PERFORMING FRAGILE ECOSYSTEM***, 2019. Interactive breathing performance, 4 hours. Metal structures, printed PVC, sculptural arcs, spirometer sensor, custom LED system, screens, gloves, water, variable dimensions. Curated by Oil productions - Photo by Olivia Schenker.
RIGHT: ***FLUIDES GAZEUSES***, 2021. Interactive breathing performance, 17 min, performed by Salomé Chatriot, invited performer: Mayara Yamada. Metal structures, printed plexiglass, spirometer sensor in Phipo Spiral, custom LED system, screens, mirrors. Wearing Skinswear lingerie.

How do you imagine the perception of the body transforming and shifting in a world where the boundaries between digital and physical are increasingly blurred and elusive?

I don’t think the perception of the body is shifting as a consequence of the blurriness between the digital and physical worlds. It's a self-feeding mechanism. The perception and the question of the body's significance has always been a major issue in any society. The Greeks had already invented a virtual world in which they would exchange together in order to purify a set of common emotions: Theatre. In a way, the creation of a digital ecosystem is an answer like any other to universal questions: who are we and how do others perceive us? In the same way, how relevant the creation of machines becomes when we no longer consider them as tools but as distorting mirrors to help us understand what humanity is or is not.