Clara van Or, Elsewhere or Apprentice, 2024 (still)
Clara van Or, Elsewhere or Apprentice, 2024 (still)
Clara van Or, Elsewhere or Apprentice, 2024 (still)
Elsewhere or Apprentice
Clara van Or
New Media Room: 28.11.24 - 09.01.25
A grandmother who left Cambodia in the 1950s out of love for a French soul, the voice of a seer unearths the bygone stories of two ancestors. Amidst the rustle of nature and the fragments unveiled from ancient Persian and Egyptian legacies, all is whispering, bearing witness to a fleeting era, its echoes etched in the very sinews of existence. Temporal and spatial confines dissolve, unfurling as a constellation of clues waiting to be embraced.
At the crossroads of documentary, experimental, and dreamlike fiction, Elsewhere or Apprentice retraces a personal odyssey along maternal threads of heritage and dives into the meanders of collective memory.
The video becomes a medium of exploration where the artist shapes the body into a guide, venturing into the invisible, and allowing memories to seep in and vibrate. Through art objects, archives, and voices of those who wove the tapestry of transmission, the apprentice seeks to resonate with the mysteries of History. Is there an elsewhere, or far-off horizon anymore? All appears to swish in the air. Spirits lurking within the stone can be heard. Despite all that has been silenced, buried by the confines of ages, the body responds. By movement, an imprint resurfaces, inscribed deep within the cells, of what, even forgotten, still lingers.
Through its lens, a poetic vista emerges, capturing the delicate choreography of generational bequests.
Clara Van Or is a French hybrid artist who envisions creation as a breath that fosters transcendence, an exhale for exceeding, erasing borders between the seen and hidden, a trail to realms unknown, a continuation of self's questing.
She first studied at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations in Paris and then completed a Master's degree in Literature and Art History at the Sorbonne. She then joined the Louvre Museum as Events Manager where she coordinated in situ projects for internationally renowned artists, choreographers or musicians.
Simultaneously, she crafts paper masks evoking a personal menagerie and unseen entities, while exploring writing in diverse forms. She publishes in Passages of Ink and PEAH, from Sometimes Editions. She also collaborates with the Structure Libre Company for the writing of VILLA, a dance piece that queries the body in architecture. This project is nurtured in residence at various distinguished locations across France, including the National Choreographic Center of Orléans and the National Dance Center in Pantin, and has been showcased at the Hivernales in Avignon.
Fueled by a multidisciplinary approach, she creates Elsewhere or Apprentice, a short film that intertwines video, visual art, writing, and dance movement. With the intention of crafting a hybrid form at the crossroads of experimental, documentary, and dreamlike fiction.
She has recently settled in Cape Town following a more than two years life experience in remote areas of New Caledonia, nestled in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, to enrich her creativity and inner exploration.
She opts for a pseudonym to reclaim a distant lineage, that of Cambodia, as a way to accompany her creative journey: to reclaim an elsewhere, to venture toward the buried.