Clélia Berthier, Le ventre, 2024, 80 kg d’argile, paille, bois, structure de brouette,restitution de la résidence croisée Bonus, Nantes et le centre d’art et de diffusion Clark, Montréal. Crédit photo : Alexis Bernard
Clélia Berthier
Artist-in-Residence
- Residency
AXENÉO7 is pleased to welcome artist Clélia Berthier (Nantes, France) for a research and creation residency taking place during the spring 2026 programming season. This residency is presented as part of an international exchange program developed through a partnership between the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) and Le Lieu Unique (Nantes, France).
Following an initial stay in Montréal in 2024, as part of an exchange between Centre CLARK and Bonus, the City of Nantes’ artist studios in France, I wanted to continue my research at AXENÉO7, in Gatineau, focusing on local culinary practices.
I am interested in the uses, gestures, and forms that shape different ways of preparing, sharing, and eating food. In this context, I am particularly drawn to objects associated with wood-fired cooking, barbecues, and toasters, including a collection of toasters held in the archives of the Canadian Museum of History.
These elements resonate with my installation practice, which I develop through edible materials such as bread and popcorn. I explore the sculptural potential of forms and materials connected to food, seeking to create situations of sharing and collective gathering while also engaging with a more intimate dimension: that of the body, gestures, hands, and the belly.
Punctuated by historical and personal anecdotes, the objects produced during the residency will be conceived with the understanding that I am only passing through. They will be mobile, transportable to the scale of my suitcase, or designed to re-enter circuits of reuse and repurposing after their activation.
This residency will also offer an opportunity to meet artists whose performance-based practices may enter into dialogue with my own.
Clélia Berthier is a visual artist based in Nantes, France. Her practice centres on installations and performative sculptures involving edible materials such as bread, corn and rice. She is interested in the actions and uses surrounding food, the forms this produces, and the experiences it generates. She completed a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Fine Art at the University of Rennes 2 before joining the École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, where she obtained a DNSEP in 2019.
She joined the Ateliers Bonus in July 2021, received the City of Nantes Visual Arts Prize in 2023, was awarded a residency at the Centre d'art et de diffusion Clark in Montreal in 2024, and was invited by Bertrand Godot to hold her first solo exhibition at Le Carré Contemporary Art Centre in Chateau-Gontier in September 2025.
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