Contes Immoraux – Partie 1 : Maison Mère

Maison Mère was devised by Phia Ménard in 2017 in response to a proposition from Documenta Kassel 14.
At the start of the performance, a large piece of cardboard is placed on the floor like a gigantic surprise package, out of which a construction stubbornly emerges. Alone on stage, the artist puts up the walls by adjusting its supports; without any evident emotion, she traces, cuts, folds and assembles the box until she has made a Monopoly-like house, the result of all this labour. We curiously and sometimes anxiously follow the efforts of the steady worker. What comes next relates to the artist’s suspense and the cumulus towering above her. An allegory of a Europe permanently being built and threatened by clouds of obscurantism, Maison Mère offers the masterly spectacle of a fragile world, full of all kinds of references but condemned to extinction.