From 11 to 26 October 2019, Mouvements Modernes, presents in the heart of Saint-Germain, in front of La Palette at  5 rue Jacques Callot, the work of the French-Australian  Nadège Desgenétez.

This glassmaker and teacher, originally from Normandy, has lived, worked and exhibited in Europe, North America and Australia.

After receiving numerous awards, grants (Prix d'Honneur de la Fondation de France) and residencies in France, United Kingdom, United States and Australia, she has been teaching since 2005 at the Glass Workshop of the Australian University of Canberra.

All of her travels have inspired her work, which draws on her experience as a migrant and creator exploring ideas of connection to place.

Her work extracts references to the body, familiar landscapes and the glass-blowing process.

Here is what she says about the medium through which she expresses herself, the glass: " When I consider my relationship to the medium of glass, specifically blown glass, I am strongly aware of my physical connection to my work. At once physical and mental, glass blowing requires a commitment to the present, a keen awareness of the body’s boundaries and abilities and of the specific needs of the molten glass. Forming, or transforming, in response to the body, the material is shaped by touch, with breath, answering every move, in a sequence that cannot be interrupted or postponed. Objects made of hand blown glass embody the process through which they are made. This allows for an inherent connection between the glass blower and the blown object, but also between the object, the place in which it is made, and the maker."

Art historian, scholar and former Museum of Arts and Design director, Glenn Adamson, described her work as follows: "It would be difficult to overstate my surprise and amazement on encountering the work of Nadège Desgenétez, [which] combined sensuous, consummately crafted forms with a probing investigation of feminist iconography. Most impressively, she uses the materiality of glass itself to suggestive effect. Her sculptures reflect light when polished, but capture and internalize light when sand blasted, creating the impression of varying states of mind, extroverted and introverted, and of contrasting states of the body as well, subjective and objectified. It is an entrancing and sophisticated body of work."

With this first solo show in France, Nadège Desgenétez will once again seek to express the presence of the body and its interrelationship with place by exploiting the way in which glass interacts with light, colour and space through form, surface and reflection. Fragmentation, fluidity and immobility as an exploration of the interrelationships between the place of the body and manufacturing will be its main threads. Through her sculptures in coloured or uncoloured glass, reflective or matt but always abstract and infinitely poetic, she will question the body of the viewer in space.