As part of the exhibition “AMOUR” at the Mathgoth gallery, in Paris, in 2020.
(Series: “Words of Love”: Variations of the word AMOUR in different languages and dialects: French, English, German, Chinese, Korean, Inuktitut, Sinhalese, Russian, Arabic, Bengali, Congolese, Spanish, Ilocano, and Maori. To remember that love is universal and that borders do not matter. Technical: paper folded, stick on wood panel with texture. Texture create with peint, sand, dust, mood, argile)
“Mademoiselle Maurice returns for the third time to Mathgoth for a (very) personal solo show entitled “Amour” from March 20, 2020. This universal feeling is expressed in around forty works that testify to the artist’s ability to transcend her themes and to surpass herself to amaze and give the best of herself. Through an introspective journey to the depths of her soul, the inspired origami artist speaks to us in the same spirit of existential crisis and meditation, constantly playing on extremes with the brilliance for which she is known.
If creation often proves to be curative, for Mademoiselle Maurice it is a vital necessity. The year 2019 was a particularly trying time for her. Undermined by two illnesses, she suffered the loss of two close friends and a romantic breakup; this was followed by the disturbing rediscovery of celibacy at the age of 35, after living as a couple for more than ten years. It was also that year that she took a trip to India that upset her. She stayed and worked in the Dalai Lama’s village populated by Tibetan refugees where the connection with nature, the human bond with the four elements and the colorful harmony dear to her heart are manifested in particular through traditional thangkas. In the midst of a burnout accompanied by a phase of questioning her place as an artist in an increasingly anxiety-provoking system, she embarked a few months after this trip on a ten-day meditative retreat without speaking (in Buddhist culture, it is called Vi passanā). This mental introspection will literally push her to overcome her inner demons, to the point of realizing that her ultimate ideal, and by the same token that of humanity, is Love. A universal love – like her art – which aims to reflect her own values to share: kindness, empathy, honesty, respect for our planet must be watchwords in counterpoint to everything that hinders them and which is reflected in the media conveying hatred, selfishness, fear and withdrawal into oneself. To selfiemania, she opposes self-love as a virtue – accepting yourself as you are, without judgment, leads to fully opening yourself to the love of others. This is why in this explosion of Love, we will not see the swear words that she often likes to adorn her colored papers to illustrate her rants. Articulating her reflection around three series, Mademoiselle Maurice invites us to travel here and now in her intimate cosmos, always with the principle of Yin/Yang in the balance of everything as a backdrop.
In the first series, her dark side, mourning and chaos are revealed through works with black backgrounds worked with clay – the fundamental material from which life on Earth is born – where light vibrates: it is the rainbow and the flashes of white that emerge from it. It is a set with almost Babel-like accents; the word Love appears in several languages around which various pieces of recovered paper are arranged. The second speaks to us of fauna and flora in the form of pencil drawings that she signs with her origami wallpapers. So many collectible butterflies in a cabinet of curiosities, in hymn to what nature offers us. This nature is found in the third series, this time on wooden supports decorated with small pieces of assembled plastic from waste recovered in the street or on the beach. Painted metal birds stand out, implicitly accusing the pollution that kills them – they are, in a way, symbols of love in a cage. March 20, 2020, the day of the opening, is also the first day of Spring and this date turns a page for Mademoiselle Maurice, so to speak, post-purgative. It brings us back to the essential and reminds us, like the famous Beatles hit “all we need is love” that we just need love. Quite simply.”