instagram @ash.perier
ashleyperier1@gmail.com

Hello. 
My name is Ash Périer, I am currently developing a in)disciplinary situated art research practice that is intended to work with environmental conservation and local knowledges. 

For the past five years, my work has been focused on water, imagining ecosystems that take care of water while working affects from humans and non-humans on a local scale. 

My work intricates writing, sound, light, taste, smell and video that I assemble into immersive installations accessible within the art world but aiming to reach beyond it’s limits and work with environmental conservationists and non-academic knowledges. 

Conservation experiences

  
Before studying and working in the art world, I worked for a year (2017 to 2018) between Central America and Asia to develop environmental conservation skills as research for my futur artistic work. I was trained by biologists and conservationsists on the field mostly in enrichment and gathering/sensitizing local comunities.
 

• Volunteer at the Jaguar Rescue Center (Costa Rica) to care and rehabilitate injured or domesticated animals. Enrichment of the reserve and maternity of primates mainly. 
• Reinsertion of injured or domesticated animals in the protected natural reserve La Ceiba in the jungle of Costa Rica, Limon.
• Volunteer at the Elephant Nature Park founded by the great Lek Chailert in north of Thailand. 
• Volunteer at the refuge Petes Mission  focused of street dogs in Paï, in Thaïlande. 
• Responsible of volunteers at the Center ASVPA conservation of marine turtles in Costa Rica (Montezuma). Nesting, regulation and protection of the eggs mainly.
  

Studies

2019-2022 Bachelor’s Fine arts - Installation and performance arts at ERG (école de recherche graphique) in Brussels.
2022-2023 Erasmus exchange program at the Accademia Di Belle Arti in 2022 in Bologna, Italy
2023-now, finishing a Master of Fine Arts focused on Situated knowledges, installation and Performance at ERG in Brussels.

A lot happened that night at the Centre Pompidou of Paris...
Amongst them : experimental food, playful methodologies, postapocalyptic care, soft explosions, rock and tree licking, electrochoc readings and active participation of visitors all within a radical austerity in the means of production.

With Stevie Ango,  Barb Lefebvre, Maxence Obein & Ash Périer. 
Supported by The Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris and part of the Extra! Le festival de la littérature vivante.  Beaubourg, Paris. 13.09.2024

SILENT INSTRUMENT (2024 Brussels, Belgium)

This silent instrument installation requires visitor’s touch to activate the smells, lights, shadows and movments thereby engaging unsulually with sensation and perceptions.  

MOLTING / hydrocarbons (Belgium, Sloviena 2022-2023)

This work started from a precise situation : water contaminated by petrol leaks. Moulting explores ways to take care of water in a poetical but also concretely effective site specific manner involving local comunities in 3 steps : 

1. Collecting hair @Recyclart Art Center and braiding a collective hair journal
2. Activating the hair filter at the surface and unpolluting local lakes
3. Phytopepuration system and exhibition in Brussels and Slovenia

1. Hair journal, harvesting stories and hair for the filter @Recyclart, Belgium. 

It started as an exhibit at the Art Center Recylart in Brussels where visitors were invited to donate their hair while writing personal stories and memories about their life. Troughout the exhibition, a hair journal grew braiding stories from arround the world and collecting hair that will later serve to unpollute water. Hair has an outstanding bioabsorbant capacity : 1kg of hair can absorbe up to 8L of petrol. Arround 120 beings donated their hair.

2. Activating the hair filter at the surface of polluted local lakes

Later on, I sewed a floating filter made out of all the hair of the participants and went to swim in lakes and rivers where there had been leakings of petrol in too small quantities for big epuration centers to be taken care of. These swims activated the filter through a reparative and collective choreography.  

3.  Phytopepuration system and exhibition in Brussels and Slovenia

After the hairfilter unpolluted waters, I treated it in low-tech phytoepuration system using plants capable of biodegrading the residual hydrocarbons in a hydroponic system. This installation was featured at ERG in Brussels in collaboration with Ernesto Thielemans. Later, Molting has been selected in the finalist young european emerging artist contest ‘Code green : Future of Europe 2022’ and was financed and featured at the BITE performance art festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia.  https://biteofart.org/2023/08/21/announcement-of-the-results-of-the-bite-2-0-open-call-for-young-artists/

This research took the shape of writings, installations and performances deploying a chain reaction of care faced to a chain of suffering. Around 150 beings participated : human-animals, non-humain animals, vegetals, minerals, two lakes and one river involved. 
Molting is pulsated by an interspecie collaboration and mooves towards ecological resilience.