Marie
Cloquet

Born in 1976, Cloquet received her education in LUCA School of Arts in Gent, Belgium, where, having been influenced by her family, she had initially wanted to pursue the profession of architecture. Her deep-rooted interest in the field is still remnant in her works, which she began to show to the public in the early 2000s. Since then, Cloquet has held solo exhibitions at Koraalberg Art Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium; Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium; Annie Gentils Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; and more. Cloquet currently lives and works in Gent, Belgium and is represented by Annie Gentils Gallery (Antwerpen, BE), Galeria Hilario Galguera (Mexico City, MEX en Madrid, ES) and Jason Haam Gallery (Seoul, KR). 

A special sensitivity for contrast and color nuances arises at a young age for Cloquet. As a child she discovered the camera obscura and photography remains important throughout her oeuvre. With genuine curiosity she travels the world in search of raw materials in places of destruction, scrap and rubble and documents this with an eye for constructivism in destruction. She develops the collected photos analog in huge format to physically attack them later. Cloquet refines a technique all her own that shows affinities with Land Art as well as collage, watercolor, and the way the old masters depicted a landscape. Old and contemporary processes merge in this idiosyncratic process, which she constantly feeds with new experiments. Within her oeuvre, Cloquet creates, in addition to two-dimensional images on canvas, (photo) sculptures and in situ installations.

What challenges Cloquet is the debris and collateral damage of the globalized consumer society. With amazement and activism simultaneously, she grabs the fragments of capitalism and urbanization. With intuition for aesthetics and humanity, she creates enchanting, apocalyptic new landscapes that can be read as alternative and confrontation at the same time. “It is an attempt to put a tender veil over dramatic imagery, to cover with a layer of beauty the confronting truth about the current state of the world and the human condition,” wrote Ory Dessau in her 2021 monograph Around Obstacles.