Biography of Viktoriia Oreshko, Visual artist
Vicktoriia Oreshko is a visual artist born in 1997 in Sarny, Ukraine. She lives and works in Paris. She graduated in monumental painting from the Lviv Academy of Fine Arts in 2018 and continued her studies at the École supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux and at the Université du Québec à Montréal. In 2022, she joined the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Her work explores cultural identity, memory, trauma, and resistance through painting and installation. She draws on personal and theoretical archives to examine violence and the routines of everyday life. In 2022, she participated in the exhibition Tout art contre la guerre at the Palais de Tokyo and in an art symposium in Amman, Jordan. Her work has been exhibited in several galleries and international events, notably in Paris, Bordeaux, and Montreuil.
Now I know that to love is an act of creation. Love belongs to no one. Love is free. I love you.
A poem-chair
“I adopted the chair, this familiar object, a few decades ago, at a time when I wanted to create art on a human scale in public spaces, while everywhere else people opted for the monumental: it is an object shaped like the body and serves the body. It is difficult to feel exclusive ownership of an object so universally shareable. It is mine when I occupy it, but if I leave it, someone else can claim it as their chair.” Michel Goulet, artist-sculptor.
The project Prendre position
Prendre position is a sculpture-installation project of 47 chair-poems to mark the 100th anniversary of the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris. They were installed in a flowered meadow created especially for the occasion by the campus estate service.
This artistic installation was conceived by the Quebecois artist-sculptor Michel Goulet, in collaboration with François Massut, founding director of the collective Poésie is not dead.
Each house on the campus is represented by a chair, thanks to a donation from the Maison des étudiants canadiens and the support of the Labrenne group. Each of the 47 chairs is a unique work.
History and architecture of the house
Since 1976, the Résidence Robert Garric has been located in the west wing of the Maison Internationale. This residence was entirely funded by a donation from the American philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. It was designed by the American architect Jens Fredrick Larson in 1936.
