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4 Févr. – 26 Mars 2022

Cottagecore

PARIS

“Cottagecore”

GALERIE SULTANA

10 rue Ramponeau

February 4–March 26, 2022

The home—as Carmen Maria Machado writes in her 2019 memoir In the Dream House, a queer love story

gone rogue—“is never apolitical. It is conceived, constructed, occupied, and policed by people with power,

needs, and fears.” During the height of the pandemic, the Cottagecore lifestyle spoke to the needs and fears of

many people sheltering in place, its leisurely diversions marking a brief interruption (if only by force of circum-

stance) in the status quo of relentless productivity. While Cottagecore has been criticized for circulating images

of nostalgia and for romanticizing traditionally gendered tasks like baking and gardening, the pastoral aesthetic

garnered enthusiasts, the LGBTQ+ community amongst them. The group exhibition “Cottagecore” obliquely

explores this cultural phenomenon and its fetishism of domesticity, craft, and agrestic greenery, exploring the

convergence of space and identity through a queer lens.

The artists selected here play with Cottagecore tropes to varying degrees. Jesse Darling’s We Tried, 2019, plun-

ges steel rods (typically used to reinforce concrete) into blocky feet of white clay; the sculpture isn’t Cottagecore,

though it shares its malaise with the contemporary built environment. Edie Fake’s candy-colored gouaches re-

semble mosaics against jet-black backgrounds: compositions of sheer reverie, not habitability. Meanwhile, Benoît

Piéron’s relationship to interiors is informed by experiences of childhood illness and repeated hospital stays. In

Paravent, 2022, a pallid patchwork of repurposed hospital sheets is inset within a clinical “privacy screen”—too

insubstantial to offer any genuine seclusion—while the wallpaper panel Baldosas Inmaculadas, 2012-2022, slyly

merges medical iconography and decorative patterning in the style of William Morris, who a century and a half

ago advanced artisanal handicraft as a corrective to the alienation of industrial labor. Cottagecore's critique of

modernity, while substantive, also has its limits as a trend, which—considered from this later moment in the

pandemic—already seems like a relic of a bygone age.

— Sarah Moroz

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Exhibition view © Aurélien Mole

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Exhibition view © Aurélien Mole

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Exhibition view © Aurélien Mole

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Benoît Piéron

SĂ©rie des peluches psychopompe , 2022

Patchwork en draps réformés des hôpitaux / Patchwork of

repurposed hospital sheets

20 x 43 x 8,5 cm

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Benoît Piéron
Le Rouge à Lèvres, 2015
Sang de l'artiste, cire, lilas blanc / Artist's blood, wax, white lilac
11 x 3 x 3 cm
4 3/8 x 1 1/8 x 1 1/8 in

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Benoît Piéron
Savon (pour Auricio), 2022
Huile d’olive, soude caustique et huile de laurier, saponification à froid
Olive oil, sodium hydroxide, laurel oil, cold saponification
20 x 5 x 5 cm

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Benoît Piéron
Paravent, 2022
Patchwork en draps reformés des hôpitaux, cloison d’intimité d’hôpital
Patchwork with repurposed hospital sheets, medical screen
155 x 183 x 40 cm

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Edie Fake
The Long and Short of It, 2021
Gouache sur panel / Gouache on panel
35.56 x 27.94 cm
14 x 11 in

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Edie Fake
Molten Core, 2021
Gouache on masonite panel / Gouache sur panel
101.6 x 76.2 cm
40 x 30 in

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Edie Fake
Old Language, 2021
Gouache on panel / Gouache sur panel
61 x 45.7 cm
24 x 18 in

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Edie Fake
Night Soil, 2021
Gouache on masonite panel / Gouache sur panel
91.4 x 91.4 cm
36 x 36 in

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Edie Fake
After Hours, 2021
Gouache sur panel / Gouache on panel
61 x 45.7 cm
24 x 18 in

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Exhibiton view © Benoît Piéron

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Robin Plus
Sunlight, 2021
Tirage jet d’encre / Inkjet printing
13 x 18 cm

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Robin Plus
Yaone, 2021
Tirage jet d'encre / Inkjet printing
Image : 99 x 69 cm
Encadré / Framed : 115 x 85 cm

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Jesse Darling

We Tried, 2019

Tiges métalliques et argile / Iron and clay

Dimensions variable