Ceysson & Bénétière
Stephané Edith Conradie , Namibia
Stéphané Edith Conradie, Klinkende Simbaal II, 2025, Assemblage d’éléments divers, Courtesy Ceysson & Bénétière
Galerie Ceysson & Bénétière is delighted to present recent works by artist Stephané Edith Conradie, created this spring during her residency at La Chaulme. Her work questions the way in which identity is constructed in the domestic sphere, in a context intertwining the legacies of colonialism and creolization.
Growing up in a country of which she has no cultural background, Stephané Edith Conradie places her reflections on identity at the heart of her artistic practice. In her own words: “I am of the place but not entirely indigenous to the land (…) My bundles or assemblages will aim to reflect on the idea of being simultaneously alien and indigenous to a place. She sees herself as a descendant of the Rehoboth Basters who left the Cape Colony in 1868 to settle in present-day Namibia. Her presence in this country is thus the fruit of historical displacement, making her neither foreign nor indigenous. From this point on, the concept of home appears as a fictitious space appropriated out of a need to belong, a shifting and unstable zone prey to historical and political forces. For the artist, domesticity is constructed through the small, accessible and mobile objects that the working classes often accumulate to decorate their interiors, and which can be taken away when they are forced to leave. Conradie integrates them into her assemblages, juxtaposing porcelain trinkets, figurines and junk ornaments. Collected from second-hand markets or forgotten interiors, these little folk treasures bear witness to intimate and collective histories. Their value is not monetary, but emotional. They console, bring people together and soothe. A veritable archaeologist of the intimate, Conradie breathes new life into these scattered fragments of memory, reassembling and accumulating them, doubling the apparent kitsch with a strong symbolic impact.
This principle takes on new resonance in the artist’s recent use of uranium glass, whose luminescence under UV light evokes a supernatural glow.
Harmless in this form, the material contains traces of a highly toxic ore mined at great depths – notably in Namibia, which alone accounts for 6% of the world’s uranium production. An extraterrestrial mineral born of a supernova, now a source of energy or destruction, it is here brought back to an intimate, decorative, almost innocent scale. But this luminous glass carries a story of dispossession. In Namibia, as elsewhere, uranium mining is in the hands of foreign powers and does not benefit local populations. It revives the colonial legacy of the plundering of African resources, without compensation. Uranium thus becomes a haunted material: that of a colonial ghost, of an invisible violence still at work.
As a vector of a troubled memory, her work extends her questioning of appropriation, colonial circulation and the silent forms of dispossession, and is part of a wider reflection by the artist on the creation of a Creole aesthetic.
Solo show of Stephané Edith Conradie
From May 15th to June 21st, 2025
The gallery
Founded in Saint-Étienne in 2006 by François Ceysson and Loic Bénétière, subsequently joined by Bernard Ceysson, artistic advisor, the Ceysson & Bénétière gallery expanded its presence in Luxembourg, Paris, Geneva and New York. In Luxembourg, the gallery now has a vast space at Wandhaff / Windhof near Koerich, measuring 1400 m2 and with more than 1200 m2 devoted solely to exhibitions.
Gallery artists
Wilfrid Almendra, André-Pierre Arnal, Amina Benbouchta, Trudy Benson, Vincent Bioulès, Roger Bissière, Robert Brandy, Pierre Buraglio, Louis Cane, Denis Castellas, Franck Chalendard, Alan Charlton, Max Charvolen, Claire Chesnier, Stephané Edith Conradie, Olivier Debré, Marc Devade, Daniel Dezeuze, Noël Dolla, Mounir fatmi, Philippe Favier, Daniel Firman, Christian Floquet, Gloria Friedmann, Toni Grand, Nancy Graves, Antwan Horfee, Rémy Jacquier, Phillip King, Sadie Laska, Lauren Luloff, Tomona Matsukawa, Jean Messagier, Champion Métadier, Nicolas Momein, Tania Mouraud Alexander Nolan, ORLAN, Bernard Pagès, Aurélie Pétrel, Jean-Pierre Pincemin, Florian Pugnaire & David Raffini, Roland Quetsch, Dorothea Rockburne, Lionel Sabatté, Patrick Saytour, Frank Stella, Rachael Tarravechia, Nam Tchun-Mo, David Tremlett, Mitja Tušek, André Valensi, Bernar Venet, Claude Viallat, Jean-Luc Verna, Wallace Whitney, Jesse Willenbring, Yves Zurstrassen
