Clemen Parrocchetti: To Devour Life / Charly Bechaimont: Degrés Est

Clemen Parrocchetti: To Devour Life
Trained at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan in the 1950s, Clemen Parrocchetti produced a prolific body of work ranging from drawing and sculpture to installation. This freedom resonates with the freedom she has granted herself in her artistic exploration of roles traditionally assigned to women.

Clemen Parrochetti (1923–2016, Milan) draws her formal vocabulary from domestic materials, notably sewing and embroidery, as well as dolls and children’s toys, which become tools of denunciation and protest. Some of the recurring symbols she uses underline the social limitations imposed on women while embedding them in grotesque depictions of the female body. Her materialist take on feminism echoes the approach of the Immagine collective, which revisited Marxist theories to emphasize that women must free themselves from the role into which they have been confined: that of a child-bearing machine. From the 70s, the artist’s militancy finds its way into her work; she transposes certain key feminist issues—the right to abortion and the fight against domestic violence among others—into her representations of the female anatomy while untangling the absurdity of the social straitjacket.

In the 1990s, Clemen Parrochetti develops an interest in life forms often considered as secondary or even harmful—such as moths and other insects. She will dedicate the same attention to animals or insects and human beings, to the point that the boundaries between species become porous in some of her drawings. The strength, and at times violence, of nature’s cycles—birth, devouring, and death—is evoked in the artist’s work in all its ambivalence, underlining the inherent complexity of the female condition and connecting it with other forms of life. Clemen Parrocchetti establishes in her work relationships with nature that bridge human/animal and pest/ally divides, in an opening towards ecological issues that invite us to rethink such categories and renegotiate our relationship with nature to find inspiration for a society to come.

Presenting the Italian artist for the first time in France, Frac Lorraine continues its exploration of artistic genealogies, tracing little-known continuities and lineages by bringing women artists back into canon.

The exhibition takes place in partnership with Ar/Ge Kunst (Bolzano) and Museo Novecento (Florence).

Charly Bechaimont: Degrés Est
Charly Bechaimont (1991, Saint-Dié-des-Vosges) is an artist who belongs to the marginalized Traveller community (which includes Roma, Travellers, Sinti, Manouches, Gitans, Yeniches). He invites us to look at society’s violence by making use of waste—some of it toxic—in his works. Having surrounded him from his childhood onwards, these elements have much to talk about his singular trajectory. Wandering around disregarded cityscapes is an integral part of his creative process. In doing so, he scavenges material for his work but also perpetuates one of his community’s guiding acts: ‘inhabiting dead places’—as the ‘reception areas’ designated for Traveller communities in France are often located near heavily polluted areas, containing heavy metals or dangerous chemicals. The artist probes our prejudices about dirt and highlights the exposure of certain minorities to environmental injustice. By invoking the car, violence, and dirt, Charly Bechaimont plays with stereotypes about Travellers to turn them inside out and neutralize them.

Events
Imagine the world: feminisms and ecology: April 5, 3–6pm
Conference with the Institute of Postnatural Studies, Sonia D’Alto, researcher, and Geneviève Fraisse, philosopher.

Radio Hito: April 24, 8–9pm
Experimenting with sound, Radio Hito unfolds piano melodies with texts sung in Italian.

Subjective tours: May 14, 6:30–7:30pm
Follow an unusual tour of the exhibition with an entomologist (insect specialist).

The Hills’ Party: May 31, 3–11pm
Artist Kris Lemsalu performs a musical parade with hybrid creatures, followed by concerts.

Both exhibitions are curated by Fanny Gonella, director of Frac Lorraine, in collaboration with Sophie Potelon, head of program. Frac Lorraine would like to thank the family of Clemen Parrocchetti (especially Martino Guidobono Cavalchini), Marco Scotini as the scientific director of the artist’s archive, and the gallery ChertLüdde (Berlin). Two other exhibitions present the work of Clemen Parrocchetti in 2025: at Ar/Ge Kunst (until February) curated by Marco Scotini, Francesca Verga and Zasha Colah; and at the Museo Novecento in Florence from the autumn.