Camille Lévêque and Lucie Khahoutian - SUMMIT MEETING
Patara Gallery and The Why Not Gallery are glad to invite you to the exhibition ‘Summit Meeting’ by Camille Lévêque and Lucie Khahoutian.
Orchestrating a discussion of two voices, Camille Lévêque and Lucie Khahoutian narrate, exchange and investigate their relationship to the notions of homeland and memory. The former, French of Armenian origins, the latter an Armenian immigrant in France, confront their stories and the way time distorts their memories and transforms their experiences into romanticized tales.
The exhibition highlights the melancholic relationship of a community with its heritage and at times heterogenous relationship with its diaspora. From the content to form, the story told follows the track of time, its impact on memory, and therefore, on truth. The artists constructed a dialogue deliberately leaving room for inaccuracy and subjective interpretations.
Camille Lévêque is in fact the sole author of the work, attributing to her alias Lucie Khahoutian -in reality her grandmother- a lighter voice than her own. One searching for answers and recognition, the other looking for closure and constructive transmission. This internal dialogue, staged and developed as an imaginary conversation amongst several generations of the same family illustrates the desire for a new lexical field to recount one’s own identity.
Camille Lévêque (b. 1985, Paris) holds a BA in Fine Arts and Literature from Paris 8 University and an MA in Fine Arts from UCLA (Los Angeles). Working mainly in photography, collage, video and installation, she mainly explores intimacy and builds narrative series blending straight documentary works with an artistic and personal approach.
She has been working as a reporter for the UNHCR in Armenia and an editorial assistant for Magnum Photos in Paris to then focus on her practice as a photographer and publisher. She is founder and member of LIVE WILD collective and the co-founder of publishing house ORPHEUS STANDING ALONE. With LIVE WILD, she experiments since 2014 on authorship, identity and anonymity by the use of aliases. Her works are featured on various publications, online and in print, and exhibited internationally.
Leveque has lived and worked in France, Armenia and the United States, she is currently based in Paris, France