Fabrique de nuages [Cloud Factory]

The work of Marie-Luce Nadal (b. 1984, lives and works in Paris)—a graduate in architecture and scenography—consists in interpreting and constructing artificial landscapes by observing her environment and the way in which humans perceive it. Dynamics, currents and their interactions, the movements at work in the universe are at the heart of her investigation. How does one capture what is aerial or possess what is intangible?

At the Palais de Tokyo, Marie-Luce Nadal centers her work around a characteristically vaporous element: clouds, which can cross borders and transcend the systems put in place by man (territories, nations, cultures, etc.). Fabrique de nuages [Cloud Factory] —a system invented by the researcher—allowed her over the course of her travels to catch clouds and reduce them to extracts in order to make them reproducible at will. Poised between industrial production and utopian dream, Marie-Luce Nadal is developing a project that attempts to make man’s Promethean dream a reality: to master the elements and own them.

The researches by Marie-Luce Nadal are lead in the framework of the doctorate SACRe PSL Research University with the laboratories EnsadLab (Reflective Interaction group) and ‘Physique et Mécanique des fluides en Milieux Hétérogènes’ (ESPCI).

Curator: Rebecca Lamarche Vadel