Clovis Ladouce in residence at Motoco

Motoco is delighted to welcome Clovis Ladouce (they/them), winner of the 2025 “Residency” Prize of the Mulhouse 00 Biennale, dedicated to emerging European contemporary art.

In partnership with La Kunsthalle, Motoco is hosting them from September 15 to December 15, 2025. After spending six years in Tours, Clovis graduated from ESAD TALM Tours with a specialization in SES (Sculpture, Space and Society).

“My work explores queer identity and memory, revealing its struggles and cultures. Here, it is rooted in an exploration of cruising—that coded wandering where desire, anonymity, and transgression intersect. I observe the spaces, objects, and furnishings that interact with this practice and become its silent witnesses. Selected for their aesthetic, emotional, and symbolic charge, they are diverted, reinvented, and transformed into fragments of memory. Through a series of gestures, they absorb narratives and become carriers of a queer memory blending fiction and reality.
Between archives, intimate narratives, and political perspectives, my work explores desire, loss, sexuality, fantasy, and also the resilience of a community. It navigates homosexual intimacy and questions masculinity, the new cartographies of desire shaped by dating apps, and the forms of escape sometimes offered by the night and its artifices.”

Clovis demonstrates a strong political commitment expressed through meaningful art. They explore the dualities of our world and the contrasting perceptions of an object, a piece of furniture, or a human being—the innocence of a first glance giving way to a darker narrative; hiding or revealing oneself?

Drawing from History and personal experience, Clovis gives these subjects a voice and reveals their many facets. They use the color pink—a color deeply tied to gender and loaded with symbolism—as a medium that transmits a voice from which fantasy, fear, and pride emerge.

They portray the history of the queer community, and more broadly, the quest for gender and sexual identity. This personal journey confronts societal challenges, requiring a constant balance between self-pride and fear of others.

A perilous exercise, a quest for freedom that everyone experiences in their own way. For some, reality does not offer enough freedom, and the temptation to escape it becomes too strong. So how can we transform our environment to allow everyone to feel proud and free to be themselves?

Since the beginning of their residency in Mulhouse, Clovis has taken advantage of the proximity to Art et Matière to discover new objects and give them a voice. And, as with each of their works, these objects will express themselves in different forms, from installation to performance. You will soon be able to discover their new works and creations.

Visit their Instagram: @ladouce.clovis, https://www.instagram.com/ladouce.clovis/?igsh=dDF0eDg1NWtjdnk0