Exhibition | LA BOÎTE EN VALISE POUR JACQUELINE LAMBA BY MONIQUE DEREGIBUS | Biennale européenne de création contemporaine (Marseille)
LA BOÎTE EN VALISE POUR JACQUELINE LAMBA DE MONIQUE DEREGIBUS from 28th August to 29th November 2020 at Biennale européenne de création contemporaine, Manifesta 13 (Marseille)
Marseille 13055
The European Biennial of Contemporary Creation, Manifesta 13 Marseille, held in Marseille from August 28th to November 29th, 2020, featured a group exhibition at The American Gallery of Contemporary Art, directed by Pamela King. Titled Disobey Orders, Save the Artists, the show brought together 13 artists around the figure of Varian Fry and the artists who lived in Marseille during the 1940s under the Vichy regime. As part of this project, seven young artists reimagined the famous Marseille Tarot Game.
As part of this D.O.S.A. exhibition, Monique Deregibus presented a “box in a suitcase” inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise. This unique piece, the result of over a year of work, is a tribute to the world and work of Jacqueline Lamba. At its center is a large sketchbook titled L’amour fou, published by Gallimard, in which Monique Deregibus shares photographs from Jacqueline’s life: her encounters, loves, friendships, her time in Mexico and at Air Bel. In counterpoint, and with many nods to those familiar with this world, Deregibus selected images of the sea, fireworks, moonlight, springs, spiritism, and also press photographs of war and its destruction.
“This free and playful work responds to the only question that truly matters, the artist writes: how can one genuinely restore the memory of Jacqueline? Or more precisely, a presence? How can we, within the scale of our disjointed lives, weave a garment made of shared emotions, political, emotional, and human convictions?”
Numerous reproductions of her paintings and drawings, along with a few cherished objects—such as dice, seashells, small stones, and fragments of Native American pottery—accompany the central notebook. The panels of the box display several of Jacqueline’s works from various periods: her surrealist phase, her time in America, the 1950s, and her later work in Simiane-la-Rotonde.
La boîte en valise pour Jacqueline Lamba, 2020. Carton, papier, papier photographique, technique mixte, 90 x 130 cm
AOUT MONIQUE DEREGIBUS
After studying literature and film at the University of Aix-en-Provence, Monique Deregibus, born in 1955 in Marseille, graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles. She has taught photography at the School of Fine Arts in Valence, at the ENSP in Arles, and at the Fine Arts School in Lyon. A photographer, she regularly exhibits her work, which is held in various public collections in France and abroad. Each of her photographic series, shaped by a conceptual legacy, focuses on specific territories—sometimes near, sometimes distant—always expressing a deep interest in the memories embedded in the frame, as well as in the notions of architecture and urban space. Taken together, these form the abandoned backdrop of human tragedies.
Her sensitive and original work—both unpredictable and offbeat, politically engaged and nostalgic—finds its fullest expression in the creation of this Boîte-en-valise dedicated to Jacqueline Lamba. It is a moving and remarkable tribute from a woman of Marseille to the all-powerful orchestrator of the sunflower’s night.
