Valérie Mrejen

Passionate about art and literature, she enrolled at the Ecole de Cergy-Pontoise to study art. After completing her studies, she organised her first exhibition in 1994, and published some of her texts, including Liste rose and Meilleur souvenir in 1997. That same year, she introduced the French public to her first video works, Une noix, Bouvet and Au revoir, merci, bonne journée, and took part in several festivals and exhibitions in France and abroad.

Despite the short duration of the video sequences she makes, Valérie Mréjen is already setting out her line of thinking. Showing a keen interest in everyday life, she films ordinary people and seemingly banal aspects of everyday life. She is also interested in language, its difficulties and sometimes even its absence. These are the moments so sought after by Valérie Mréjen.

To highlight the flaws and limitations of language, La Française's ingenuity led her to opt for a minimalist staging with sparse sets and fixed frames, in which non-professional actors are seen repeating stereotypical phrases such as "How are you? What are you up to?" and "What are you talking about? In much of her work, the video artist shows a keen interest in the question of intimacy and the relationship between language and intimacy. In Jocelyne (1998), a young woman shares her night of love with us, while in Valérie (1999), a woman confides in us about her disappointment in love. Valérie Mréjen reviews the most banal situations in Le goûter, even going so far as to tell us about couples' quarrels in Des larmes de sang (2000). After Chamonix (2002) and Dieu (2004), Valérie Mréjen directed a thirty-minute documentary, produced by the Arte theme channel, entitled Pork and Milk.

Alongside her video work, she has also written a number of books, including Mon grand-père (1999), L'agrume (2001) and Eau sauvage (2004), in which she explores the limits of language in the face of memories and intimacy. The same year, she published a collection of children's stories, Une dispute et autres embrouilles.

In 2008, Valérie Mréjen made several video films, including Ils respirent, Voilà c'est tout, Hors saison and* Capri*, produced especially for the Jeu de Paume in Paris, where she exhibited the same year. In 2009, she was one of the participants in the eighth edition of the contemporary arts and writing festival, ActOral.

The artist, who is also a visual artist, video artist and novelist, was a resident at Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto in 2010. The following year, her film En ville, co-directed with Bertrand Schefer, was selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes and nominated for numerous awards. In 2012, Valérie Mréjen published her latest novel Forêt noire and was honoured by the Centre Pompidou for an evening at the Festival Hors Pistes and for the exhibition Portraits de famille.