A still from Salomé Chatriot's Fluid Landscapes (2020).
Photo: Courtesy of Ortamiklos and Friedman Benda, New York
Next Big Things: Salomé Chatriot
Exploring the precarious relationship between man and machine, the polymathic talent won the Siemens Ingenious Digital Art Award in 2020
Salomé Chatriot performing Fragile Ecosystem (2019). Photo: Olivia Schenker
The young Paris-based artist Salomé Chatriot has been causing a stir for her groundbreaking art that explores the relationship between man and machine. She works with electronics, computer coding, interactive design, sculpture, performance, and even 3D modeling, making it hard to categorize her practice. But just don’t call her a digital artist. “I find it so restrictive. Everyone wants to put you in a box these days…” says Chatriot, who is represented by New Galerie. “I think I would like to be considered an alchemist.” In Chatriot’s world, the physical, virtual, and digital states exist simultaneously.
Influences: Greek myths, classical theater, medicine, the human body, and the aesthetics of machinery. “I think I am most nourished traveling on a high-speed train. I am so captivated by the landscape, seeing the shapes and counter shapes go by.”
Salomé Chatriot, Breathing Patterns (Aqua), 2020. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and New Galerie
Salomé Chatriot, Breathing Patterns (Vulva), 2020. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and New Galerie
Best in show: Early in the pandemic, Chatriot created a breath-generated video diptych in which gently moving shapes recall the inside of the lungs. The innovative piece earned her the Siemens Ingenious Digital Art Award and an upcoming exhibition at the Centre Pompidou.
Mission: “My work is about a harmony between man and machine. I try to make the machines more delicate, fragile, and sensitive. Let’s just say, if there is a rise of the machine, they will know I am on their side.”
“Salomé is a young emerging artist who is experimenting with very innovative materials as they intersect with her own body. She belongs to a long tradition of performance artists who use their own body as a tool of transformation, and I very much look forward to following her brilliant career.”
Cecilia Alemani, artistic director, 2022 Venice Biennale
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2021 Winter Issue under the headline “Next Big Things.” Subscribe to the magazine.
Cover: A still from Salomé Chatriot's Fluid Landscapes (2020).
Photo: Courtesy of Ortamiklos and Friedman Benda, New York
