Laure Prouvost’s immersive solo exhibition on display at Rice’s Moody Center for the Arts

Rice’s Moody Center for the Arts is now showing the work of Laure Prouvost, an award-winning visual artist who has created an immersive experience as her first solo exhibition in Texas. The exhibition, “Above Front Tears Nest in South,” is on display through Dec. 14.

“Laure Prouvost is a well-known international artist who has had major exhibitions around the world,” said Frauke Josenhans, curator at the Moody. “The impetus for this exhibition is to introduce Houston audiences to her work — to her imaginary world — and it seemed like an excellent fit given the different topics she engages in within her work.”

The disruptive presence of reality is introduced through an installation that evokes oil spills and their catastrophic consequences for the environment. Prouvost’s vision highlights current critical issues as seen through the lens of eco-feminism and at the same time asks the visitor to forego set expectations and let the mind levitate in a space of boundless freedom.

In the exhibition, the visitor embarks on a symbolic journey, flying south then nesting at the Moody, referencing Houston’s unique location in the North American migratory path for birds.

Welcomed by a sprinkling indoor water fountain, visitors enter Prouvost’s strange world to immediately experience the evocative power of nature, bodies and language guided by a large tapestry. The first encounter includes the video “Every Sunday, Grand Ma,” projected in the Media Art Gallery. A recurrent protagonist in Prouvost’s artistic universe, Grand Ma transforms into a human bird in this video, leaving the dark grounds behind her to fly over the clouds, unbound and weightless like a celestial creature, looking at the world from a bird’s eye view.

As the visitor proceeds through the Brown Foundation Gallery, a bleak image of the Anthropocene unfolds with its gloomy environment occupied by pipes, oil leaks and detritus of our consumer society. Virtual reality elements and videos introduce aspects of our digital age, and yet traces of nature are present, creating subtle points of connection as visitors find their way through oil puddles, dunes and soil.

“The Nest,” a monumental structure between the two main exhibition galleries, evokes a natural bird habitat while functioning as a transitional space that visitors enter and cross before arriving at a utopian landscape that occupies the Central Gallery filled with fog, a soft mountain to climb and rest upon and levitating objects. Overall, the exhibition conjures a compassionate, hopeful future where humans live as part of nature rather than working against it. Every element, be it large or small, natural or manufactured, plays a role in helping visitors imagine a more productive and positive way to inhabit this world.




“Laure Prouvost has a fascinating approach. She draws from artistic traditions such as surrealism, Dadaism and other early 20th-century art movements, but she looks at them from a contemporary perspective and combines these references with very topical issues like the degradation of the natural environment and questions around feminism,” Josenhans said.

The exhibition was originally commissioned in Norway for the National Museum in Oslo. When the show closed, Josenhans worked with Prouvost and her team to bring the works directly to Texas. In doing so, the curator and artist collaborated to reimagine the exhibition to fit the Moody’s spaces.

“The finished installation really speaks to Prouvost’s artistic vision, which is always playing with what is real and what is imagined,” Josenhans said. “There’s a constant shift between what we see and what we imagine and deciding what is our reality. Human perspective is subjective, so there are constant surprises in the exhibition as you walk through different spaces.”

The internationally renowned Prouvost is known for works like “Above Front Tears Nest in South” — immersive installations filled with paradoxical elements and surprising juxtapositions that blur the line between art and everyday objects. Visitors become active participants in her exhibitions as they navigate the environments she imagines. From carefully produced textiles, glass sculptures and experimental videos to sturdy metal structures, ready-mades and found objects (some from the surrounding Rice campus), Prouvost’s latest work conjures lasting memories and sparks vivid emotions.

The Moody will host a series of events to spotlight “Above Front Tears Nest in South”:

Saturday, Oct. 21, 8-10 a.m.
Bird Walk with Cin-Ty Lee
Join the Moody and Houston Audubon for a special bird walk through Rice’s campus led by Rice professor Cin-Ty Lee. The event ends in the Moody’s galleries where visitors will spot more flying creatures in the fall exhibition.

Friday, Oct. 27, 6-8 p.m.
Dimensions Variable: Oliver Halkowich
Enjoy an original dance performance inspired by the exhibition choreographed by Oliver Halkowich, former Houston Ballet Soloist and now choreographer at the New Orleans Ballet Theatre. Guests will traverse the galleries with the dancers, accompanied by live music.

Saturday, Nov. 4, 3-5 p.m.
New Art/New Music
Take in a presentation of original scores composed in response to Prouvost’s installation created by Rice’s Shepherd School of Music students and performed in the galleries.

The exhibition “Laure Prouvost: Above Front Tears Nest in South” is curated by Josenhans and designed by Diogo Passarinho Studio. A selection of works and exhibition elements were originally produced for the exhibition, “The Fredriksen Commission: Laure Prouvost. Above Front Tears Oui Float,” at the National Museum in Oslo, Norway, in 2022.

The exhibition is made possible by the Moody Founder’s Circle and the Elizabeth Lee Moody Excellence Fund for the Arts. “Above Front Tears Nest in South” is supported by Etant donnés Contemporary Art, a program of Villa Albertine.