Anita Molinero works in sculpture, seeking new forms in the way objects deform and materials degrade, generally as a result of fire. Her art explores the contrasting properties of liquefying, vitrifying heat.

The punk energy of her early career has given way to a concern with environmental issues. In the 1980s, she gathered junk to assemble into works of art as a way of “sticking her tongue out [at sculpture] all the way to the ground”: the solemn, male attributes of sculpture were a particular target. Later, she worked with bins, street furniture and material from building sites, identifying junk as the horizon of human activity. Her newfound fascination proved an earth-shattering revelation: plastics were proliferating and invading the planet like a science fiction monster. Yet she is careful not to preach, instead illustrating the monster in its own materials, focusing on its transformations, and studying its flow towards disaster. Her unusable bins are blooms, dragons, giant worms, snaking their way into the grounds of the Château de Versailles before forming an insurrectional enclave in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

Anita Molinero’s art is violent and rebellious, seeming to delight in necrophiliac chaos. Yet the concern hidden behind the sense of revolt is viscerally human.

Anita Molinero was born in 1953 in Floirac. She lives and works in Paris.

The exhibition was made possible thanks to the support of the Fondation Nestlé pour l’Art.