Exposition
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Unknown to the general public, the work of the Swiss artist is highlighted in a beautiful exhibition at the Center Pompidou-Metz. His sewn works, inspired by the worst hours of the 20th century, create an original distressing atmosphere.
It is an inhabited, strange and singular work. From a no less strange and singular artist. A woman apart whom men adored… And who presented herself as a “witch breeder”, a “vampire tamer” or a “consultant in wouzi-wouzi”. Eva Aeppli crossed the 20th century as a furtive, isolated passenger, leaving behind her a procession of lugubrious and terrifying textile figures: a scattered work that gave a hard time to exhibition curators Anne Horvath and Chiara Parisi. The pieces are mostly in private collections, they had to be tracked. At the Center Pompidou-Metz, “the Sentimental Museum of Eva Aeppli” is the first French retrospective dedicated to this special artist, born in 1925 in Zofingue (Switzerland) and who died in Honfleur in 2015. To show her influence, the curators have created echoes with artists in its galaxy but also with a wider circle that includes Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois or Annette Messenger.
To briefly situate Eva Aeppli, we must first talk regarding…