Camille Henrot

Camille Henrot, born in Paris in 1978, is a French artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses film, sculpture, drawing, installation and painting. Drawing on fields including literature, mythology, anthropology, psychoanalysis and digital culture, her work investigates the complexities of contemporary life and the systems through which knowledge is organised and transmitted. Henrot combines rigorous research with intuitive and associative processes, frequently questioning established structures of classification and representation. Henrot studied film animation at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Early in her career, she worked as an assistant to artist Pierre Huyghe, an experience that contributed to the development of her approach to moving images and narrative. In 2013, she received the Silver Lion for a promising young artist at the 55th Venice Biennale for Grosse Fatigue. Created during a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, the video attempts to narrate the creation of the universe through a rapid montage of images, spoken text and music, reflecting on the accumulation of knowledge, information overload and the search for meaning. Henrot’s exhibitions are often structured as immersive, thought-provoking environments. In 2017, she presented Days Are Dogs at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Conceived as a carte blanche exhibition, the project examined how the seven-day week structures our experience of time, using sculpture, drawing, video and works by other invited artists. Her 2023 exhibition Sweet Days of Discipline, presented at Lokremise, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, brought together more than 30 works addressing care, discipline, labour and the systems that organise everyday life. Throughout her career, Henrot has received numerous distinctions, including the Nam June Paik Award in 2014 and the inaugural Edvard Munch Art Award in 2015. Her work has been presented in major institutions internationally and is held in prominent collections, including that of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Henrot’s continually evolving practice examines the pressures, desires and contradictions of contemporary existence, as well as the ways in which individuals construct, classify and navigate their realities.