top of page

Pierre and Florent

Pierre and Florent have worked together for more than ten years, creating projects that turn clothes, objects, and memories into portraits. In works like “Mémoire Habillée” and “Ostension” they show how personal stories can also reflect collective experience. Their process is simple and open, letting each encounter shape the result. What comes through are images and installations that draw attention to ordinary gestures and belongings, revealing how they carry memory and emotion.


Mémoire Habillée - Disha - HD
Mémoire Habillée - Disha - HD

Q: You’ve been working as a duo since 2010. What keeps your collaboration alive after so many years?


A: For the past fifteen years, we have been not only partners in work but also in life. Love, the constant urge to question new issues, to experiment with fresh mediums, to wander into unexplored themes, to keep meeting new people, to feed an insatiable curiosity, and above all, mutual support.

For us, that is the recipe for longevity.

 

Mémoire Habillée - Julien - HD
Mémoire Habillée - Julien - HD

Q: In "Mémoire Habillée" people choose clothes and objects to build their own portrait. What surprised you most in watching them construct those stories?


A: What surprised us most during the creation of "Mémoire Habillée" was witnessing how effortless the process was for some, and how challenging it proved for others. Guiding our participants through this exploration of their identity was deeply engaging. It was profoundly moving to see certain individuals conceal, within the structure, discreet and heartfelt tributes to a family member, to witness the pride with which they placed a garment or an object on the "accumulation," and to become the attentive ears to so many intimate stories. Presenting their objects and clothing ultimately became, for them, a modest yet profound way of narrating themselves. Modest and sensitive, because through this gesture their stories, their memories, their identities became tangible to themselves, and to others.


Ostension - Ivana 1 - HD 
Ostension - Ivana 1 - HD 

Q: Your project "Ostension" asks people to share memories of intense emotions. What did collecting those testimonies teach you about how we carry feelings?


A: It is striking to witness how storytelling, and the "re-staging" of the memory of a powerful emotion, can make it resurface with such intensity. For the participant, it opens the possibility of a new reading, a re-processing, a re-configuration. It is a return to the past that heals a form of appeasement, or at the very least, a movement that sets in motion a new personal dynamic. We live in a time when the expression of emotion is not particularly valued, where vulnerability is often perceived as a flaw. Our world tends to privilege reaction, speed, and performance. "Ostension" creates the opposite condition: a moment of elevation, a long, introspective, and performative time in which our participants can relive a defining moment in their lives.

 

Q: Working between documentary and performance, how do you decide how much to stage and how much to let happen naturally?


A: All our projects begin with a testimony, a story, something rooted in reality. From there, we search for the most fitting artistic form to represent that reality. The boundary between documentary and performance, therefore, is never fixed. What we strive for is to create a context in which things can unfold on their own. A degree of staging is necessary to establish the conditions for an encounter, yet what interests us most is what escapes our control, what happens unpredictably. It is within this tension, between intention and accident, between control and surrender, that the strength of the project is born.


Ostension - Ivana 2 - HD 
Ostension - Ivana 2 - HD 

Q: Fashion, music, photography, installation — your work moves across many fields. What do you take from one world into another?


A: We began our career in contemporary art fifteen years ago. A few years later, our path shifted more towards fashion and music. For the past five years, we have returned, with joy, to a more personal practice. Commercial work taught us to conceive concepts, to cultivate rigor in preparation, to acquire a wide range of techniques, and to manage both teams and budgets. Our personal, artistic sensibility has always run beneath the surface, and it guided our commercial work with intention and meaning. We have always asked ourselves the question of "why." Whether in our personal projects or in our commissioned work, the notions of meaning and intention remain central.

 

Q: From Paris to Monterrey to Daejeon, you’ve shown these projects internationally. How does the audience’s response change the way you see your work?


A: The themes we explore in our work are universal: identity, individual and collective memories, and the transmission of remembrance. 

At every exhibition, we notice how the audience takes hold of these themes and, in turn, shares their own stories with us, often with great emotion. No matter where the project is presented, spectators frequently find themselves asking the very same questions posed to our participants: "What would I choose to represent myself?" "Which of my garments define me?" "What is my greatest memory of joy or of sorrow?"

These exchanges, these stories entrusted to us, these emotions shared during our presentations, have become a vital force in our creative process, driving us toward new ways of narrating, toward new forms of storytelling.

 
 
bottom of page