Visiting artist professor

2023 - 2024 / 2021 - 2022

Justine Emard

Born in 1987 in Clermont-Ferrand (France)

Justine Emard (born 1987) explores the new rela-tions between the way we live and technology. By combining different visual media -- photogra-phy, video, virtual reality and performance -- she places her work within a flux that links robotics, neurosciences, organic life and artificial intel-ligence. Her works have been exhibited at the Moscow International Biennale of Contem-porary Art and in museums such as the NRW Forum (Düsseldorf), the National Museum of Sin-gapore, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Cinémathèque québécoise (Montreal), the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), the MOT - Museum of Contem-porary Art Tokyo, the Barbican Centre (London) and the World Museum (Liverpool).

In 2020 she was in residence at the ZKM, Center for Art and Media and she was awarded the "IMAGE 3.0" national photographic commission awarded by the CNAP in partnership with the Jeu de Paume in Paris.
Since 2011 Justine Emard has been manipulating images and their modalities of appearance by intertwining different mediums and experiences. She creates forms shaped by her relation to the world, at the intersection of several different disciplines and scientific fields, which she brings into play and stages. The mineral kingdom, arti-ficial life, technologies, automation and machine learning inform her artistic practice and inter-vene in her works. She works to create new links between humans and their technologies, within a poetic and sensitive perspective on the present.

From the creation of a dialogue between an android robot and a psychologist (Erika, research film, 2016) to the materialisation of dreams as 3D impressions (Dreamprints, 2021), via a perfor-mance with a Buddhis monk (Heavy Requiem, 2019), or again, a dialogue between the mineral and the digital (Exovisions, 2017), her works generate new protocols between virtual and real. The creative processes she implements origi-nate in encephalographic captures, particular programming systems, three-dimensional scans and databases, which she exploits in collabora-tion with scientific laboratories.

Her apparatuses start with unsupervised deep learning experiments and dialogues between man and machine. In Co(AI)xistence (2017) she presents a first encounter between two different life forms: a dancer/actor and a humanoid robot, animated by a primitive kind of life force, an artificial intelligence programmed by the laboratory of Takashi Ikegami (Tokyo University), whose humanoid incarnation emanates from the labo-ratory of Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University). Thanks to a complex system of neural networks, her apparatus generates a reciprocal learning process between human and machine, in an attempt to define new prospects for coexistence.

The phenomenon of emergence is central to her practice, which focuses on the appearance of new alterities. In Supraorganism (2020) she animates an installation that comprises robotised glass sculptures by means of a machine learning system elaborated using data collected from a bee colony. The unpredictability of the system results in a singular viewer experience. The light and sound of this new organised being react symbiotically, surprising and clashing with each other in a structured, organic and open constel-lation. From this ensemble there emanates a kind of collective intelligence, itself generating new images, which stem from the shadows and reflections projected into the space-time of the installation.

In 2021 she took an interest in the origin of images, from their appearance on rock walls at the dawn of humanity to their birth in our imagi-nary and our brain, on the very surface of the visual cortex. Working from encephalographic captures, she invites us to enter into contact with images buried deep inside us, by becoming conscious of their existence.

Biographie

Justine Emard lives and works in Paris. 

Her work explores the new relationship developing between our lives and technology. 

By combining different image media – from photography to video and virtual reality – she situates her work at the crossroads between neuroscience, objects, organic life and artificial intelligence. Her installations take as their starting point experiments in deep learning and the dialogue between human and machine. Since 2016, she has been collaborating with scientific laboratories in Japan. She was awarded the French Institute’s Hors-les-mursresidency in Tokyo in 2017. 

Her work has been exhibited in museums such as the NRW Forum (Düsseldorf), the National Museum of Singapore, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Itau Cultural Institute (Sao Paulo), the Cinémathèque Québécoise (Montreal), the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), the MOT Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, the Barbican Centre (London), the World Museum (Liverpool), the Pernod Ricard Foundation (Paris), the CNES – Centre national d’études spatiales (Paris), the Musée du Louvre-Lens and the ZKM, Zentrum für Künst und Medien (Karlsruhe). She has taken part in international biennials such as the Moscow International Biennial of Contemporary Art (Russia), the Tongyong Triennial (South Korea), the Karachi Biennial (Pakistan) and the Chengdu Biennial (China). 

In 2020, she was commissioned under the “IMAGE 3.0” national photographic project by the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP) in partnership with the Jeu de Paume in Paris. In 2021–2022, and again in 2023–2024, she will be a visiting artist-teacher at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains. Her work features in several national and international collections. In 2023, she was awarded the “100 femmes de culture” prize in France. Justine Emard is artistic director of the permanent exhibition at the French Pavilion at the upcoming World Expo in Osaka in 2025. 

www.justineemard.com


WORKS PRODUCED AT LE FRESNOY

Panorama 26 / Toute ressemblance avec la réalité n'est pas une pure coïncidence

Chim[AI]ra / Avatars In The Era Of Artificial Intelligence

Installation, 2024

Panorama 24 / L'autre coté

Hyperphantasia / Des origines de l’image

Installation, 2022