GENEVIEVE LEVIVIER: UN ARBRE A SOI

With profound materiality, Geneviève Levivier’s ritualistic process involves both collecting and creating, making works at the nexus of body and spirit, Nature and Self. By collecting plants, recycled textiles, remnants of natural fibers, and pages of classic texts from her family's library, among other discoveries that call out to her, she births a story beyond the physical materials in the image of the interconnected and dynamic "Self" of psychoanalysis.

Using organic and textile materials, as well as the recurring motif of tree bark, which she photographs and abstracts in her works, Levivier invigorates the bond with Nature. The veins of a majestic tree, read in the filigree of her weavings and laser engravings, reconnect us to our roots in the earth – a perspective too often lacking in our world in crisis.

And with Nature as her primary source of inspiration, summoning up the luminous horizon of a clearing or the intoxicating dazzle of snow, she also speaks of the anguishing melting of glaciers, the burnt woods of great fires, the night torn apart by the madness of men without humanity... For the Self is all these things at once, and the textile, at once supple and enveloping, sculpted and tortured, a symbol of humanity and history, says something of this world we desperately hope will improve.

Geneviève Levivier's experimental and conceptual artistic approach incorporates art, science and philosophy with a keen sense of materiality. The artist works with natural fibers, recycled textiles and plants, as well as with digital and artisanal techniques. The textiles and artefacts are her way of poetically restoring her links with the earth and the world, to render its nuances and the complex, paradoxical feelings it generates, particularly in these troubled times. Playing freely with textile plasticity, the works bring together myriad techniques including painting, dyeing, printing, photography, braiding, crochet, knitting, weaving, laser, sculpture, and installations. Working at once on fragility and resistance, beauty and loss, her work integrates the many symbolic meanings embedded in textiles that accompany us from life to death, embellish our daily lives, protect us, and ultimately disintegrate.

The artist has exhibited widely including solo exhibitions at Centre d’Art Contemporain Abbaye de Neimenster, Luxembourg (2022) ; Chapelle de Boondael, Brussels (2021) ; Musée Van Buuren, Brussels (2020) ;  Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth, Waterloo, Belgium (2020) ; Abbaye de Villers-la-Ville, Belgium (2019). 

Selected group exhibitions include DOGA Museum, Oslo (2024); Lake Como Design Festival (2023) ; New-York Textile Month, New-York (2022 et 2019) ; Musée du Textile, Bourgoin Jailleux, France (2020) ; Design Museum, Ghent, Belgium (2019); MUBE Museum of Sculpture, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2014) ; Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, Lille, France (2015) ; Pallazzo delle Stelline, Milan, Italy (2015) ; Pavillon de France officiel - Exposition Universelle de Milan 2015 ; Centre Wallonie Bruxelles à Paris, France (2014) ; Triennale di Milano, Milan (2013). 

In 2018, she won the Worth Project award.  That same year, she received the title "Talent du Brabant Wallon" in the presence of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium. In 2015, she was a finalist for the Prix Théophile Legrand de l'Innovation Textile - Institut de France, Paris.

Her works are part of the Herpain Collection, Brussels; the Bulcke Collection, Switzerland; and the Collection d'Art Publique de la Province du Brabant Wallon, among others.