Born in 1987 in Versailles, France, Anne-Laure Wuillai studied two years plastic arts and applied arts at the Université Le Mirail in Toulouse. After having frequented the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris for five years, she made her bachelor in visual arts at the Université du Québec in Montreal, Canada and subsequently her Master of Arts in Paris. Already during her studies, Anne-Laure started to participate in group exhibitions, first in Paris and after her relocation to Nice (2015) in the Côte d’Azur region and in other towns in France. Since 2018, she has her workshop as permanent residency in “La Station”, a centre of contemporary art in Nice.
A determining element in Anne-Laure’s oeuvre is water. She creates artworks representing different physical states of it, as liquid or steam and also frozen, combining water with other materials, like sand and sediments. Mostly she is using water from the Mediterranean Sea, as in our artwork of the month February 2023: “Hyper Conditionnement – Gabion 50 cm³” (Hyper-Packaging – Gabion 50 cm³) from 2019. Here she enclosed the salty liquid in plastic bags and put them in a gabion. In other works of the series “Hyper-Packaging” the water bags are in a shopping trolly or combined with stones from the beach. Moreover, she collected water samples and presented them, partly coloured in glass tubes, spheres, or Plexiglas sculptures.
Combined with air, the resulting pieces might reflect the blue sky in the water or show the evaporation of the liquid element. In most of her works, the artist points to our infinite environment, which we are trying to domesticate. Besides the aspects of reality, she also introduces poetic components. In consequence, the artworks have scientific orientation and are technically accurate, but at the same time they refer aesthetically beyond that.
Until the 18th of June 2023, Anne-Laure’s works are on view in the exhibition “Vues sur mer” at the Centre International d’Art Contemporain in Carros, France. From 18th of March to 14th of May, she will participate in the group show “Puissantes” at the Citadelle de Villefranche-sur-Mer (Chapelle Saint Elme). Her residence in the Parc National de Port-Cros, in partnership with the FRAC Paca from 2022, will end with an exhibition in the Fort Sainte-Agathe, on the île de Porquerolles starting at the 29th of April 2023.
Anne-Laure lives and works in Nice.