En attendant le retour du soleil, 2021
Laura Thiong-Toye’s work is perhaps best described as a playground. Disparate images meet and seem to either converse or argue, as if on a remote island at the crossroads of different cultures. It is interesting to note that the artist's family is originally from the island of Réunion: a hotbed of cultural intermixing. Echoing this process, Thiong-Toye offers spectators an unapologetic perspective on art history, where the funny, the ugly, the sacred, the beautiful and the subtle, all live together in a space that seems to have always been theirs.
Jeremy Gafas
Full text / @laurathiongtoye
Laura Thiong-Toye (1986) is a Swiss artist who lives and works in Geneva. During her studies at HEAD-Geneva, she formed one half of the duo Thiong-Toye/Racine – a partnership that lasted 8 years, for which she won the 2015 Prix Berthoud and participated in the 2014 Swiss Art Awards.
Since 2018, she has worked on her own projects, presenting her work in several exhibitions: Halle Nord Geneva, where she won the Act-Art grant (2020), at Wilde Galerie in Basel as a finalist for the Picker Award (2020), at the CHUV in Lausanne for the Fondation Alice Bailly prize (2021), and at Yohood Gallery in Shanghai (2018).
Her work revolves around a daily practice of painting, which also extends to making sculptures and installations. Her most recent paintings take vases and flowers as their subject, and uses them as a pretext to play with shapes, colours and patterns. They integrate different elements from a wide variety of places, times and socio-cultural categories. The painted space then becomes a playground where these images – which could not have come together in any other context – now dialogue happily together.
©Thomas Maisonnasse
©Isabelle Meister (portrait)
showcase has been provided by the Groupe SPG - Rytz
Laura Thiong-Toye
la contemplation multidimensionnelle