Lolita Burdet Chaumet
Envisioning La Caravana Obscura, Lolita Burdet transmits scientific and artistic knowledge around photography while enabling intergenerational encounters. A portrait of the culture smugglers who won the Maison Chaumet Echo Culture Awards on April 18.
Nothing happens by chance. This is what comes to mind when exploring the career of visual artist Lolita Burdet. With a poet grandfather, a musician father, and a sculptor mother, Lolita began life with close ties to the cultural world. For him, it will be photography after all. “When I was 6 or 7, I had a disposable camera, and when I was 10, I had my first camera. I started photographing my family. »
How to capture moments, memories, people… this is what fascinates Lolita immediately.
I drew, I drew, but what I loved was capturing moments of life, connections, reunions. I wanted to preserve these memories before they were gone.
Lolita Burdet
While studying at the Beaux-Arts, he discovered “Lab Magic”. A passion that will never leave him. “I liked not seeing what I was doing, wondering after a month. analyzes the artist in retrospect. This craft and technical side appeals to me. I also think I’m a bit nostalgic, I like things that took a long time. This makes them more valuable. »
An admirer of the work of Diane Arbus, Walker Evans and Alessandra Sanguinetti, she likes to mix mediums to express her full creativity; “It might be photography with texts, but I’ve also done an augmented reality exhibition. I like to mix old and new technologies, and all this requires other sciences that attract me, such as sociology… I also consider myself a socio-visual artist.
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Educational and human framework
From this interest in the other and society in general, La Caravana Obscura will be born. This project was developed with her association Les Cousines, created in 2014 in Montreux with the aim of supporting women’s networks in contemporary art. Inside this fun caravan is a giant camera with an analog development lab; “We’re in a world where young people don’t know how an image works because the computer does everything for us. This tool is immersive and fun, you enter it in the eye. I wanted visitors to live the darkroom experience and engage them in a more material and manual practice. »
Beyond the educational aspect, Lolita recognized the human impact of her project through the encounters it enables;
I am interested in making a part of society visible. It is a family, intimate, human relationship that is created. Caravana Obscura allows exchanges between audiences of all ages. Outside of the activity, they tell each other stories.
Lolita Burdet
It is this notion of transmission that drives him and moved him so much at Chaumet’s Prix Echo Culture that he received: “Thanks to this award, I will be able to develop the mentoring program that I created in the association to train young women in the mediation of La Caravana Obscura. It will open perspectives for them, and thus this project will not depend only on me. It will also be broadcast live. »
Finally, Lolita is happy to be part of the carriers of this culture, convinced that art contributes to the development of all; “The expression of culture is essential, he concludes. It is present in us, it surrounds us, and above all, emancipatory. »
Source: Le Figaro
