PART 2 of Interview with Lorraine THIRIA. Read the first part Here: Bodies of Time: Lorraine THIRIA on Surfaces, Memory and the Imaginary
Q: Your work is deeply sensory, but it also feels intimate. What emotional need does this practice fulfill for you?
Lorraine THIRIA: My work is indeed deeply sensory and intimate.
These impressions arise from my relationship with matter and the memories it contains. If we take the example of wall surfaces (whether the walls were photographed in India, during my residency in Pondicherry last February or in China for my upcoming residency in September), capturing them photographically is an attempt to preserve memory, as they convey a message about the passage of time : Tamil houses, like the Hutongs, are disappearing and will not be rebuilt.
Their walls have witnessed violence, screams, love, and death ; they are witnesses to lives both present and past.
I am intrigued by what the walls may have seen that we do not see : how, for instance, has a crack incorporated a memory that becomes visible only through it ?
Furthermore, in photography, I like to work with what lies outside the shot and with suggestion : no person is ever visible within the image. Nevertheless, they are intensely present and alive through all the scenes of life, the gestures, the traces, the memories contained within the matter, starting with those of the walls that speak and testify.
Series « Between walls and whispers », Goubert market 1 and 6, 2026 | Exhibitions in Pondichéry.
During my residency and exhibition in Pondicherry two months ago, I created a new series of still lifes that reflects this approach : capturing in an image a moment of life that, despite its name in french (« dead nature »), is “still life.”
The aim was to create a timeless, almost painterly composition of a French-style still life, where thdark atmosphere of the room’s walls highlights an object (a basket, a basin, a bag) or a fruit (a tomato, an onion) naturally placed in front of a dilapidated wall. And where not only is the still life sublimated (the bunch of onions becomes a floral cluster of striking beauty) but the wall is magnified by the very much living nature depicted upon it.
Series « Between walls and whispers », still life, 2026 | Exhibitions in Pondichéry
All these walls, and the traces of past and present life that inhabit and embellish them, contain evocative silences, residual memories that I attempt to access through the photographic image.
It is a work of ellipsis, of what lies outside the field of vision, that speaks to me : what does photography say about the life on the sidelines, the life outside the picture ? And this question is open to free interpretation.
It also marks a transition in my photographic work, evolving from pure abstraction—as previously presented—to a more recent, figurative style where the presence of matter, often mural matter, remains very significant.
I intend to continue this exploration of “evocative silence” during my residency in Beijing where I was selected as the artist to represent France as part of the Bicentennial of Photography (a project that received the Ministry of Culture’s certification). I want to photograph the space of disappearance, the echo of what once was, in the city of Beijing through the walls of its hutongs.
Q: Your writing suggests a strong inner world. How do writing, image-making, and thinking speak to one another in your life?
Lorraine THIRIA: I have always worked on painting, writing, and photography at the same time. But never all at once. Because the energy is different and doesn’t mix. So, without really realizing it, I alternate between periods of writing, painting, and photography.
More specifically, during a photography residency and an exhibition, these phases follow one another. Thus, during the phase of photographic research and pure creation, I am unable to write. All my energy is focused on capturing images. It is a purely and obsessively visual process, highly concentrated, which consumes me day and night.
The night is fertile ground for creation and has always possessed a transformative power over me. It illuminates the space of creativity, like a passage, a vision, a free inner path. In fact, I might wake up in the middle of the night and write down notes on an idea, a subject that has emerged from its depths.
Then, as soon as I understand how my work will be organized and begin shooting, I start to intellectualize my approach, which until then had been purely intuitive.
As I intellectualize it, the writing takes shape and my text is born. I rarely rework it because I write quite spontaneously (my previous career as a lawyer helps me a lot, I suppose)
When preparing an exhibition, I always like to combine photographs with text that describes my creative process. I’ve also started writing about the artistic practices of others, including my daughter, who is a visual artist and whom I’ve supported from the very beginning. I enjoy the act of writing as a way to reflect on an artistic approach and its evolution. The two feed off each other : thought allows us to understand an artistic gesture and articulate it ; writing down this thought also helps advance the creative process.
Photos of Exhibition in Paris « Abstraction attraction » and « Mater memoriae »
As for painting, it now joins specific photographic projects such as the one in Petra, where it was impossible to avoid painting given the painter’s palette that the Nabataean city represents. Consequently, I superimposed photographs printed on transparent fabric and canvases painted with pigments and sand from Petra ; these two mediums present an engaging and meaningful symbiosis, both in Amman and in Paris, where the exhibition was also shown.
Photos of exhibition « Requiem for Reqem » in Amman
Q: Has your practice changed the way you experience the world outside the studio?
Lorraine THIRIA: Since my perception of the world is a reflection of my inner self, I combine it with that of matter, as if the matter defines me or offers me a glimpse into my own internal world.
Photos of exhibition « Between walls and whispers », in Pondichéry.
I think of Chiharu Shiota, that great Japanese visual artist, who explained that “our first skin is human skin; isn’t our second skin made up of our living spaces—that is, the walls, doors, and windows that surround the human body?”
Based on this reflection, the matter and its memories allow me to cross the boundary of the wall and of myself in order to suggest a version, a landscape, a way of seeing, an emotion.
And for me, this suggestion necessarily involves abstraction.
Consequently, there is a deliberate blurring (or confusion) sought in my artistic approach : is it a means of escaping reality or of revealing it ?
Does the exploration of abstraction pull me away or bring me together, create blurring or reveal ?
Blur is an inner state, a mental reality : this state allows me to create abstraction by transforming figurative external reality, by metamorphosing my internal images, and by presenting images filtered through a pictorial lens.
As I explained previously, I believe I see life through painting and that I am blessed with images from it that I attempt to capture photographically and then submit to everyone’s appreciation and interpretation. The ultimate goal for me, after all, is to share and create emotions.
Series « Requiem for Reqem », Abstract colored mirror 1 & 2, 2025
Q: How has your practice changed since it began?
Lorraine THIRIA: My experience in both photography and scenography allows me to approach projects with greater distance and confidence, even though I continue to doubt myself constantly.
In particular, I know that for a residency project, I never begin shooting without first visiting the exhibition space to immerse myself in it. Photographs produced as part of a project are never created in a vacuum but are intimately connected to a place and in harmony with it. The narrative, essential to the project, is therefore original and distinct depending on the locations, each of which speaks a different language.
This was the case, for instance, in the magnificent Romain Rolland Gallery in New Delhi, built of concrete and glass, or at the Orangerie du Sénat in Paris, a veritable greenhouse in the Luxembourg Gardens. These two places invited me to work with light as a substance and to play with the transparency and the distinct but indispensable vibrations it creates.
Up : Gallery Roman Rolland, Delhi | Down : Orangerie du Sénat, Paris
This was also the case in the corridors of the Alliance Française in Pondicherry, where the idea was born—while walking through the interior and exterior spaces of the gallery—to take photographs of dilapidated walls where vegetation seeps through doors and windows and takes back its rightful place. These photographs are so integrated into the vegetation on site that they almost disappear within the exhibition space.
Q: Are you currently trying to move toward new subjects, or to go even deeper into the same territory?
Lorraine THIRIA: I am currently working on another subject that means a lot to me : the exploration of neural tissue and cerebral arterial treelike structures. Working with a distinguished professor of medicine in Paris, I draw on his experience, even though my approach is obviously not medical and remains purely artistic. My aim is to reveal, through images, the poetry and beauty of these tree-like structures, and to attempt to leave a trace, a memory, of them. It is no coincidence that I have chosen to work on the brain, the images that remain, and the memory that may disappear.
Once again, and in an obsessive manner, I attempt to reveal what is invisible to the human eye, to visualize what is immaterial, what is not visible. I continue to work with the abstraction of images and the loss of reference points. The printing medium for the photographs is currently being experimented with and will inevitably be intimately linked to the subject.
Contributor
