Since 2006, the Frac Franche-Comté collection has been structured around the question of time and its corollaries (duration, movement, space, entropy, memory, etc.).
It has gradually and logically opened up to sound, performance and immaterial works, as well as trans-disciplinary works in dialogue with music and dance, all artistic practices with a long-term perspective. These latest works include installations by artists and composers Ryoji Ikeda, Hassan Khan, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Paul Panhuysen and Sébastien Roux, and installations by choreographers Valeria Giuga (Compagnie Labkine), William Forsythe and La Ribot.
Over the last three years, the exhibitions presented at the Frac have highlighted the performative dimension of this collection with the Aller contre le vent, performances, actions et autres rituels exhibition in 2022, and the interdisciplinary dialogue that unfolds through three exhibitions linking the visual arts and dance: Dancing machines (2020), Rose Gold by Cécile Bart (2020) and Danser sur un volcan (2021). The exhibitions devoted to Esther Ferrer and La Ribot are a continuation of these exhibitions.
These exhibitions will bring together the work of these two leading Spanish artists, who are represented in the Frac's collection.
The aim is to highlight the similarities between their works, but also their singularity. While Esther Ferrer works exclusively in the field of visual arts and performance, eschewing all spectacularity, Ferrer's work is resolutely transdisciplinary, expressing itself on stage as well as in the exhibition rooms of a museum or art centre. Their aesthetics are different - formal sobriety and distancing for Esther Ferrer, expressiveness for La Ribot - but both share rigour, energy, humour and economy of means, and make the body both the raw material and the subject of their work. This body
can be their own, but it can also be the bodies of others whom they often involve in their work, whether members of the public or dancers.
Both were born under Franco's dictatorship, and their work is also a reflection on the political and social body, questioning sexist prejudices and espousing the cause of women, taking an interest in extras and those left behind, and even in the victims of private or state violence. And finally, both have an equal predilection for chairs and a shared passion for Erik Satie...
Sylvie Zavatta, Director of the Frac.
