Tatiana Trouvé studio interview

The Paris-based artist Tatiana Trouvé explores the relationship between memory and material through large-scale drawings, site-specific installations and sculptures. Drawing on notions of liminality, her work often blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior, fiction and reality, absence and presence to reflect on our relationship with the world around us. ‘To me, form is sedimented content. When I put a bag and a book together with a jacket, and all three are transformed into ancient materials, they tell a story that is at once very close and far removed from humankind,’ she has said. Her latest installation, ‘Le grand atlas de la désorientation’ (The Great Atlas of Disorientation), transforms one of the galleries at the Centre Pompidou into a fantastical landscape, where the floor has been reconstructed and layered with the artist’s sculptures and drawings. Coinciding with the Pompidou show, a collection of Trouvé’s recent sculptures is on display at Gagosian gallery on rue de Castiglione until 3 September; her work is also included in a group exhibition titled ‘Haunted Realism’ at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill gallery in London until 26 August.

Where is your studio?

In Montreuil, on the eastern side of Paris.

What do you like most about the space?

The interior atrium – even though it is small, it is home to a range of different birds. There is a large fig tree that offers delicious fruit in the summer, which I share with the birds. The walls are covered with ivy and at their base, there are spread fern bushes.

The Guardian (2022), Tatiana Trouvé © Tatiana Trouvé. Photo: Florian Kleinefenn; courtesy the artist and Gagosian

What frustrates you about it?

The amount of work I can store on the floor of the sculpture workshop is limited. I would have liked to have a larger space on one level where I could store heavier sculptures without being afraid of collapsing into the storage, on the floor below.

Do you have a studio routine?

Coffee in the morning is the first thing I do, after I get home from a walk with my dog Lulu.

How messy is your studio?

Sometimes it is a battlefield and at other times it is very tidy: it follows the rhythm of the work.

Trouvé’s studio in Montreuil, France. Artwork © Tatiana Trouvé. Photo: Florian Kleinefenn, 2021; courtesy Gagosian

What does it smell like?

When I open the patio doors in the spring, the space is filled with the scent of jasmine which spreads throughout the workshop. At other times it smells of steel and solder.

Do you cook in the studio?

Always – often brown glutinous rice with shiitake mushrooms, tofu, peanuts, and other condiments.

What’s the most unusual object in there?

A camping tent.

Notes on Sculpture (2022), Tatiana Trouvé © Tatiana Trouvé. Photo: Florian Kleinefenn; courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Do you listen to anything while you work?

Yes, lately Neil Young.

What’s the most well-thumbed book in your studio?

Tool catalogues.

Do you pin up images of other artists’ works?

I pin up images of great apes and other endangered animals that I receive from organisations that I support.

‘Tatiana Trouvé: Le grand atlas de la désorientation’ is at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, until 22 August. ‘Tatiana Trouvé’ is at Gagosian, Paris, until 3 September.