Amandine Guruceaga was born in Toulouse before moving to Marseille where she is co-director of the artist-run-space TANK. Before starting her residency at the Riba Guixà leather tannery, she produced a series of works using Dutch-waxprint, the African fabric originally developed by colonists in order to strengthen trade links with the sub-Saharan nations. Over time this history has been lost… It is perhaps a notion of loss that draws the artist towards working in leather: its animal qualities seemingly erased by the tanner’s hand. In her artworks Amandine Guruceaga works the leather to the point of evanescence. Under her fingers it becomes translucent: a stained-glass window fashioned from skin. Beyond these material qualities, akin to those of the Anti-Form movement, Amandine Guruceaga’s oeuvre is a hymn to craft. Shattering classifications – between the sculptural and decorative, between heritage and renewal – the artist rejects and refutes both hierarchy and manufacturing. She posits a non-pyramidal world centred not on purchasing, but on producing.

Charlotte Cosson & Emmanuelle Luciani