Laura Tolen
Visual Artist
ABOUT
Born in Paris in 1997, Laura Tolen is a French and Cameroonian artist who grew up in Douala (Cameroon) before joining the Beaux-Arts of Paris School from which she graduated in 2020. The following year one of her works was selected by the French bank Société Générale to be added to their art collection. Some of her drawings and writing pieces were included in various publications in 2015, 2018 and 2019. As for exhibitions, her works were featured in the group show ArtuElles Interférences at the Annie Kadji Art gallery in Douala in 2020 as well as in the charity group show Home Perspectives in Paris.
Laura Tolen’s work mainly revolves around how memory is built and passed down, as well as its role in building intergenerational relationships within the family. Working with old family pictures, the artist brings into the same time and space family members from various generations who’ve never actually interacted, recreating through her work a semi-real, semi-fictional family history.
This rewriting of past memories and events also allows us, the audience, to question what we consider to be objective as well as the veracity of our memories. Indeed, because we usually do not remember much from our early childhood, the memories we do retain from that time are molded by the canonical accounts taught to us by authority figures in our families. Accounts which are never truly objective. Thus, Laura Tolen’s works do not portray the unbiased complexity of their subjects. Rather, her works reflect what the generations that came before her wished to pass on – and what they wished to keep quiet.
For the artist, this topic is also an opportunity to (re)discover her history and that of her family, since most of the events she portrays having happened either back when she was very young or before her birth, she has no recollection of them. She learns about them as a stranger would, therefore positioning herself as both a member of that family and an outsider.
In sum, Laura Tolen’s works are a way of reclaiming family stories, and a way to not remain a passive subject but to become a narrator instead.
Exhibitions:
Coming soon
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Bwo Art 