Victoire Thierrée

Sculptor, photographer and videographer Victoire Thierrée explores how nature, form and technology are used to surpass human limits in military, defence and extreme survival contexts. In 2023, as a resident at Villa Albertine, she researched the Experiments in Art and Technology (E.AT.) group and consulted original records at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. In 2024, as part of a year-long residency at the French space agency, she produced Caillou. This steel sculpture was carried by balloon 30,406 metres into the stratosphere, where it reacted to changes in atmospheric pressure, before returning to Earth. Her first solo show, Okinawa!! at Collection Lambert (Avignon) in 2025, coincided with her first book, also titled Okinawa!!, published by RVB Books (Paris). It draws on research Thierrée conducted, at the Smithsonian Archives in Washington, into plant samples collected by American soldiers stationed at military bases on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

Victoire Thierrée examines how, in 1944-45, the Imperial Japanese Army used washi paper to build balloon bombs that were launched against the United States, 10,000 kilometres away. Working with a National Living Treasure in papermaking, she will produce sculptures that investigate washi paper’s aerial properties, completed by a series of photographs.

Thierrée will also continue her research into Experiments in Art and Technology with a film. It will focus on the work of Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya and address relationships between artificial and natural, visible and invisible: central elements of Nakaya’s work and contemporary society.