{"id":662010,"date":"2026-10-22T11:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T11:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/662010\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T11:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T11:14:11","slug":"between-playfulness-and-intellectual-depth-artist-camille-provost-brings-her-joyful-interactive-art-to-paris-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/662010\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Between playfulness and intellectual depth\u2019: artist Camille Provost brings her joyful, interactive art to Paris – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camille Provost is putting the finishing touches to her upcoming exhibition in Paris when we meet at a canalside caf\u00e9 near her Hackney studio. The show, which opens during Art Basel Paris, is her second and promises to be a hands-on affair. Provost is inviting visitors to interact with her work, rearranging puzzle-like sculptures in wood and ceramic. Called Le Masque et Le Vertige (Swear That You\u2019ll Play), it takes place from 22 October-20 December at Acne Paper\u2019s exhibition space in the Palais Royal, which opened in 2025 as a cultural initiative of the Swedish fashion house Acne Studios.<\/p>\n

Provost was born in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire in 2000, a country devastated by civil war in 2002 and 2011. As a result, she has lived in Guinea, Brittany, Nairobi, and later Mali, where more unrest led the family to spend a year in Senegal. Finally able to return to C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire in time for Provost to finish high school, in 2019, she moved to France to study archaeology and art history at the Sorbonne in Paris.<\/p>\n

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Camille Provost\u2019s Figure Sculpture: Kaolin (2026)<\/p>\n

Courtesy of the artist and Loop, photo by Noah da Costa<\/p>\n

Now, through her art practice, she is beginning to reconcile the constant change of her childhood. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a lot of information about my past, and I guess I\u2019ve never really asked many questions,\u201d she says. \u201cBut when it came to making art, they came up very naturally. I wanted to understand my past and how my family ended up where they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Provost began to take an interest in the West African philosophy of existence and reality that takes a non-linear approach to time, which alleviated the need to plot a definite line through her life. It emerges in her work as open-ended pieces, like unfinished puzzles, while her choice of materials speaks of a domestic world, remnants of a home that was frequently fractured. \u201cI\u2019m not so interested in the veracity of the past, or of memory in general,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s more about how I can show myself that in the present I can have an impact on the past and change the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

While studying in Paris, Provost often visited her late grandfather, a mechanic, in Brittany. Hanging out in his workshop, she began making work of her own. \u201cThat was my first introduction to sculpture,\u201d she says. \u201cThen Covid happened, and I thought, \u2018if I want to do something different, it\u2019s now or never\u2019. So, I applied to the Royal College of Art (RCA).\u201d Though she had no training in applied or fine art, she was accepted and moved to London in 2023. \u201c[The RCA is] interested in what your ideas are before they become a practice and how this informs the things that you want to do once you get into college,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Creating a \u2018future archaeology\u2019<\/p>\n

Provost had her first exhibition in January this year, following a residency at Project Loop in Hoxton, a cultural hub that focuses on decolonising and diasporic narratives. Her seven sculptural works recalled the textures and materials of the domestic world: woven rush-fibre, ceramic and wood, all carved and reassembled into enigmatic objects. She calls this \u201cfuture archaeology\u201d, using her practice to investigate how migration shapes the individual.<\/p>\n

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Camille Provost\u2019s studio with work in progress<\/p>\n

Photo by Ayomide Tejuoso<\/p>\n

When Charlene Prempeh, the founder of the creative agency A Vibe Called Tech, saw the show, she contacted Acne Paper\u2019s creative director Thomas Persson. They agreed that Provost would be an ideal collaborator for Acne Paper\u2019s Paris space, which has previously hosted artists including ceramist Peter Schlesinger and fashion photographer Jordan Hemingway. \u201cCamille creates a fine balance between playfulness and intellectual depth,\u201d Prempeh says. \u201cThe complexities of her ideas and the scope of research she undertakes are handled lightly, and she gives the audience space to engage with the materiality of her pieces and offers them the almost meditative (and unusual) experience of play as an adult.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Paris, Provost will present visitors with a friendly challenge to step into her world. \u201cI\u2019m interested in having a practice that is accessible and joyful,\u201d she says. \u201cI know it\u2019s very simple, but I think joy in art is really important and I want my own art to be a reflection of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Camille Provost is putting the finishing touches to her upcoming exhibition in Paris when we meet at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[190603,307,304,305,306,280410,79352,308,93,4197,61,60,3023],"class_list":["post-662010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art-of-luxury","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-camille-provost","tag-ceramics","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-exhibitions","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sculpture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}