Depaysement: gallery views / by Laura J. Lawson

Dépaysement was on view at the Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art at The University of Memphis from October 21st - November 4th, 2016. 

The University of Memphis press release

Dépaysement is the MFA thesis exhibition featuring the work of Laura J. Lawson. Dépaysement, a French word with no direct English translation, describes the feeling of being out of one's home country. The exhibition addresses her three years in Memphis contrasted with her recent artist residency in Marnay-sur-Seine, France.

Lawson's paintings are made with ink on translucent plastic. The result resembles cartographic endeavors, separating the viewer from each place with an aerial perspective. Her two largest works layer these paintings in front of cut paper maps in a grid formation, creating shadows of highways beneath the landscape-like surface. In other works, Lawson has drawn directly on the painting to mix the universal qualities of topography with the arbitrary shapes of borders and roads. The color palettes of all of these paintings are specifically derived from either Memphis or Marnay-sur-Seine, but the characteristics of these places become lost in the similar and strange elements of geography.

 

Photography by Katherine Stanley Photography.

More notes by the artist on Depaysement

The exhibition was the product of my experiences after three years of study in Memphis, and a two month artist residency at the Centre d'Art Marnay Art Center (CAMAC) in Marnay-sur-Seine, France. I wanted to take a deep look at the concept of the identity of place, and I did so by investigating the landscape through color, pathways, borders, and cartography.

As an undergraduate, I spent a semester in Paris, and gained what I'll call an academic fluency with the French language. (Fluent enough, but not confidently bilingual.) My favorite words to learn were the ones that didn't have an English equivalent. Depaysement. The feeling of not being in one's home country. What is that, exactly?

The odd thing is, by returning to France for the CAMAC residency, I was essentially returning to something familiar. I spoke the language, navigating nearby Paris was already easy for me, and there were few surprises left when it came to cultural differences. Still, the light and air were different, and invisible particles seemed energized in different wavelengths. Time ran at a slightly different speed. Even on days when I felt terrible, I could still delight in how normalcy was never quite normal.

The depaysement in the French countryside reminded me of the almost imperceptible differences that continued to permeate my life in Memphis. Despite moving frequently, most of my youth was spent in Texas. Southern culture covers a huge swath of states, but despite a shared love of BBQ and sno-cones, there were still peripheral and atmospheric qualities that would never be identical.

I really saturated my mind and body in these places. They were a little familiar, a little strange, and had more in common than I could have predicted. It's invigorating to be depaysee, and these questions and memories continue to drive my artistic practice.