Sophie Kaplan

In its exploration of the relations between artistic productions, local knowledge and present-day creativity, the thematic series Lili, the Rozell and the Marimba, devoted to the contemporary and the vernacular, is accompanied by a journal. The aim being a more in-depth and broader look at the issues raised by guest artists in the course of the exhibitions and residencies punctuating the series.

With a view to drawing up the journal’s content, an editorial board made up of Lotte Arndt, Jean‑Roch Bouiller, Baptiste Brun, John Cornu, Katia Kameli, Sophie Kaplan and Émilie Renard will meet regularly throughout the series. Whether artists, researchers or curators, board members share an attentiveness both to others and other frames of reference, at the same time as they differ in their fields of activity and (sometimes widely) in their points of view.

Sophie Kaplan has been director of La Criée Centre for Contemporary Art since 2012. Holder of a degree in Modern Literature and the History of Art, she also works as an art historian and exhibition curator. While teaching at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1999–2007, she curated exhibitions in Germany and England. Director of the Centre Rhénan d’Art Contemporain in Altkirch in 2007–2012, she also taught at the Haute École des Arts du Rhin.

Exhibitions she has curated include Su-Mei Tse and Virginie Yassef, 2008; Simon Faithfull and Christoph Keller, 2010, Shannon Bool and Julien Bismuth, 2010; Aurélie Godard and Ann Veronica Janssens, 2011; Jan Kopp, 2013; Amalia Pica, 2014; Gareth Moore, 2014; Runo Lagomarsino, 2015; Ariane Michel, 2016; Joana Escoval, 2016 and Félicia Atkinson, 2017; David Horvitz, 2019. She regularly (co)edits catalogues and bookworks by artists including Julien Bismuth, Jérémie Gindre, Allan Sekula and Jan Kopp.

Her critical approach and curatorial practice centre on the importance of collaboration, in particular with artists via La Criée’s thematic series and associate artists scheme; on narrative(s) as a driving force for research, creativity and transmission; and on the hybridisation of disciplines, bodies of knowledge and the arts.