David SUET, artist-in-residence
Committed to making art and culture accessible to as many people as possible, the University of Montpellier has hosted artist residencies every year since 2009. Co-funded by the DRAC Occitanie, these residencies aim to foster connections between art and academic disciplines. Meet David Suet, a visual artist from Lozère, who is in residence at the University of Montpellier through June 2019.
Amaryllis, 2018. Group exhibition *Somewhere, Some Time: Dissolutions of Polystyrene*.
“Thanks to his past residencies at several educational institutions, David Suet has tremendous potential as an artist-in-residence. In addition to his undisputed talent, his proposals for engaging with the university community have truly fostered a consensus around his candidacy,”explains Marta Cases Bobadilla, head of cultural programs at UM and a member of the artist-in-residence selection committee since 2015.
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With the theme “Nourishing,” the 2018–2019 residency is firmly rooted in the core challenges of Montpellier University of Excellence. In this context, David Suet proposes to explore this theme through a series of visual interventions in the university’s public spaces. These may involve the creation or reinterpretation of images, or architectural and sculptural proposals. Among the materials under consideration is, for example, sugar, whose artistic interest lies in the many forms it can take (satin sugar, poured sugar, crystallized sugar) and, more broadly, in its connections to consumption.“Sugar as a material has, within the context of university research, an interesting potential: it can be found in chemistry labs as well as physics labs, in the collections of the Institute of Botany as well as in works on the anthropology and sociology of consumption,”he explained in mid-July, while he was supervising, alongside his immersion at the UM, a curation of contemporary works in the Cévennes National Park.
Exploration, creation
Having been immersed at UM since May, David Suet is currently wrapping up his “exploratory” phase of the university and its 18 partner institutions in the I-SITE consortium (guided tours, discussions with academic and administrative staff, and students).“Given its history, the University of Montpellier has a very special symbolic significance and represents a tremendous source of inspiration and study, as well as a unique exhibition setting that I already sense will be very appropriate,”he explained the day after his selection for the 2018–2019 artist residency.
Currently in the process of creating his work, visual artist David Suet defines his artistic practice—beyond visual art and the transformation of materials—as a catalyst for cross-disciplinary encounters, both in the early stages of production, such as during his recent visits to various university departments, and in the later stages, since these encounters form the fundamental material of his work.“In that sense, I hope to remain an artist who isn’t specialized in the use of any particular medium,”he confided this summer. David Suet’s entire body of work centered on the theme of “Nourishing” will be on view starting this spring. The free exhibition, open to all, will run at least through the end of June 2019.
The verb “to nourish” has many definitions and touches on numerous fields.
Within the framework of I-SITE, the University of Montpellier and its 18 partner members of the MUSE consortium are specifically focused on determining how to meet the food needs of the nine billion people who will inhabit the Earth by the end of the century. During his nine-month residency at the heart of UM, David Suet will structure his artistic research around the disciplines within our institution that evoke this term. His proposal will play with our mental representations while offering a fresh perspective on the disciplines associated with the term “Nourrir.”