Juli About

Juli About was born in Avignon in 1974 and currently lives and works in Montfrin, after spending years in Toulouse and Paris. Her discovery of porcelain happened by chance, as she initially trained in both visual arts and performing arts (theater), with a brief stint in contemporary jewelry, where she first encountered the world of porcelain. Porcelain became the focal point of her practice, revealing a way of being in the world. Working with porcelain means facing the inherent fragility of the material, as well as her own. It involves working with a material that requires care. Her work, regardless of the medium, raises questions about the body, intimacy, and the surrounding space. Her research questions the boundary between the body and the landscape, the porosity of the body within its environment. What enters, what exits, what nourishes, what hurts. Additionally, it tells the story of the connection between the interior and the exterior, between the self and the other. It touches on notions of interiority and exteriority, vulnerability, and ambivalence.

"The heart, like everything in the votive offering, is a way of speaking with the whole body. The part for the whole. A metonymy, a synecdoche. But the metonymy is global. We are part of the whole. A part of a landscape. The body is a landscape within a landscape, a kind of votive offering to all of nature. That is why taking care of ourselves is fundamental; of ourselves, of others, as fragments of the whole. It is an explosion of resonance." Her questioning also leads her to explore voice, performance, and video in installations where the experience of the body is central.