Prune Nourry
Modern-Day Venus
“Sculpture is my language, my DNA“
Prune Nourry has dedicated her artistic career to portraying the rights and status of women sociopolitically, anthropologically and culturally. Her vast array of projects have seen her delve into the female body and procreation, the issue of male-biased sex selection and reflect upon her own experience of breast cancer.
Nourry’s interests are wide-reaching. She reimagined the Army of Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an, China, as female and her sculptural work of 108 female soldiers is installed in a secret location in China until 2030. She also made a sculptural installation in collaboration with Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University of the faces of girls kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorist group in 2014.
Her exhibition, Venus, at Templon revisits the representation of women in prehistoric statues in relation to her commission for Saint-Denis Pleyel metro station in 2026. In the main room is a series of eight clay female sculptures based on victims of violence who Nourry met through a women’s association, La Maison des Femmes, in Saint-Denis.
Tell us about why you chose to study sculpture at École Boulle.
PRUNE NOURRY:
It’s a craft school to learn techniques in three years and I wanted to concentrate on sculpture because I knew that I wanted to be a sculptor. I was interested in many different materials but I wanted to learn with wood because it’s one of the most difficult ones to sculpt so it’s good to start with that before moving onto something else. According to the project, I work with specialised artisans, bringing different materials that I often don’t know even if I often like starting with clay, my material of predilection. Sculpture is my language, my DNA.
You’re known for focusing on human rights, notably those of women, in your work…
PRUNE NOURRY:
I think that France is one of the last countries in Europe where it’s still called droits de l’homme [man’s rights] and not human rights. I’d say that the key words in my work are the myths of creation, the mysteries of procreation, and the issue of balance in the broad sense on a societal and democratic level and concerning the body, health and the environment around the interdependence of the two sexes. That’s why the earth and women interest me, as does gender imbalance due to male preference.
In your exhibition Venus at Templon, the eight sculptures near the entrance relate to your project for the station Saint-Denis Pleyel, designed by the architect Kengo Kuma, for 2026. How did you approach this commission from José-Manuel Gonçalvès, artistic director of Art in Grand Paris who is responsible for commissioning artworks for new metro stations in Greater Paris?
PRUNE NOURRY:
I thought of it as a macrocosm project to represent the women of Saint-Denis through all its associations. I am developing several projects there simultaneously. I started by meeting lots of women’s associations, college professors and the town hall’s cultural department to think about how to bring a collective side to the project. We imagined La Terre qui m’est Chair [The Earth which is Flesh to Me], which launched on 29 January and lasts nine months. It’s a collection point for samples of earth that women want to share, such as from land in Morocco where their grandparents come from, and we’re going to put these samples of earth into the sculptures that will be installed in the station. For me, it’s important to not just make a work that one will discover in 2026 without having first reflected with local women.
I’m making 108 life-size sculptures, 1m70 in height [5 ft six], based on the eight models exhibited at Templon. They are free interpretations of prehistoric Venus and represent the women of Saint-Denis. I’m making eight sculptures in around 14 different colours of the earth’s skin – ochre, yellow, red, white, black…. No two sculptures will be exactly the same. What’s crazy about the Gravettian period [around 32,000-24,000 years ago] is that 90 percent of the representations of human beings were women.
You also collaborated with a local association, La Maison des Femmes, which supports victims of violence and made clay sculptures of eight women there. How did this come about?
PRUNE NOURRY:
Through meeting all these associations, I wanted to anchor myself in Saint-Denis. So I began a particular collaboration on a more micro, intimate scale with La Maison des Femmes, whose founder Ghada Hatem, an obstetrician-gynecologist, opened its doors to me. It organises workshops in dance, literacy and theatre, where I met some of the women and asked them to get in touch if they were interested in posing for me. Eight women replied to my request and I sculpted them in Villa D – a former home for young girls that’s being transformed into an art centre, which the town hall lent me and where I set up my studio for a few months.
Posing nude was very brave of them because it meant overcoming their physical or psychological trauma and any social taboo. These women came to pose for several hours at a time, for several consecutive days, so that I could sculpt their bodies in a way that’s inspired by prehistoric, Upper Paleolithic Venus. Even if those Venuses were very figurative in their era, they were relatively abstract by today’s standards which enabled me to retain the women’s anonymity. It was crucial for me to use an iron structure as the starting point because it was like a skeleton onto which I could add clay in order to sculpt. It was as if I were sculpting thanks to the women’s words and stories as I was listening to them. The exhibition will travel to the Musée d’art et d’histoire Paul Eluard in Saint-Denis for six months [from 21 March to 21 September 2025].
For the third part of your exhibition, you’ve made sculptures of moulds, using a moulding atelier owned by the GrandPalaisRmn in Saint-Denis.
PRUNE NOURRY:
It’s another part of how I wanted to work on the representation of women in the history of art. I wanted to see what had been created in the history of art, up to the nineteenth century, through the moulds in the GrandPalaisRmn’s collection in Saint-Denis.
Your exhibition, Amazone Erogène at Le Bon Marché in 2021 – featuring arrows shooting into two breast-shaped targets, was a reflection upon your experience of breast cancer as well as procreation. What shift did this prompt in your work?
PRUNE NOURRY:
Maybe before, I’d worked on subjects in a way that was almost like that of an anthropologist. Since my illness, I’ve understood that when you’re ill, you’re bound to be subjective. So I know that there’s a dimension of subjectivity in the way I work and approach a project.
Prune Nourry: Venus is at Templon, 28 rue du Grenier Saint-Lazare, 75003 Paris, until 1 March 2025. The artist will be signing copies of her new monographic book, Corpus, published by Éditions de La Martinière, at Templon on 13 February 2025 at 6pm.
Interview by Anna Sansom
Photos: Laurent Edeline
