Valentine Gardiennet

Born in 1997, Valentine Gardiennet graduated from Villa Arson in Nice in 2020. She designs large-scale installations imbued with references to pop culture, childhood, and adolescence. Using a variety of techniques including drawing, ceramics, papier- mâché, and plaster, she crafts a universe with a fairy- tale and carnival-like accents, inhabited by fictional characters. Through a playful exploration of scale – oscillating between magnification and miniaturisation – Valentine Gardiennet transposes her sketchbook drawings into three-dimensional objects, mischievously subverting the elements of reality that inhabit our everyday lives. Her installations are designed as visual journeys that invite public interaction through participatory narrative devices. Her works question society with humour, irony, and poetry, offering a critical lens on individual and collective behaviours within social and political structures. Her work has been exhibited in France and abroad, notably at Cement-Park in Shanghai, art-cade* in Marseille, the Villa Arson art centre in Nice, Les Capucins art centre in Embrun and the Centre culturel Jean-Cocteau in Les Lilas. Valentine Gardiennet is a co-builder and resident at the Wonder studios in Bobigny, where she lives and works.