Artist Viviane Sassen in conversation with curator and writer Lou Stoppard
In Viviane Sassen’s fashion work, there is the sense of haziness between time, space, form: one is not in the past, nor in the future, not in a painting, nor in an image. There is both chaos and order. Her images seem to be about becoming, about transition.
– Lou Stoppard, Memento Zine 2 – A FEELING OF WANTING
Artist Viviane Sassen will engage in conversation with curator and writer Lou Stoppard in the framework of the exhibition Memento. Viviane Sassen’s photography, with which Huis Marseille has a special connection, is both intuitive and determined; an intriguing interplay of desire. Lou Stoppard contributed a text about Sassen and the other photographers in the Red Room, with a special focus on fashion photography and the colour red, for the zine A Feeling of Wanting, published on occasion of the anniversary exhibition Memento. Together, the photographer and the writer will discuss vision and fashion, conviction and intuition.
About Viviane Sassen
The photography of Viviane Sassen (Amsterdam, 1972) is in a class of its own. The intuitive way in which Sasses approaches her subjects is entirely personal, independent of other examples or reference frameworks. She often seeds the body as a sculpture, and concepts of revelations and concealment help to create the riddles in her images. Sassen makes effective use of the mystery of shadow and the flamboyant expressivity of colour. She has also achieved a special intimacy with certain models, so that her photos can sometimes be erotic, but at the same time they can be open, rich in contrast, or explosive. Her images are invariably intriguing and remarkable, and they are, occassionally, somewhat surreal. Over the course of her career Viviane Sassen has produced a flood of marvellous images, many of which are of Africa, the continent in which she spent part of her youth.
In 2007 Viviane Sassen was awarded the Prix de Rome and in 2011 the ICP Infinity Award for Applied and Fashion Photography. Besides being much lauded for her independent photographic art, Viviane Sassen is also a prominent fashion photographer who has produced campaigns for fashion houses such as Carven, Stella McCartney-Adidas and Missoni, and editorials for magazines such as Numéro, Double, Another Magazineand Dazed & Confused.
About Lou Stoppard
Lou Stoppard (b.1990, Luton) is a British writer and curator who works across both digital and physical spaces, and writes both fiction and non-fiction. She has written for The Financial Times, Aperture, The New York Times and The New Yorker and published several books on photography, such as ‘Exteriors: Annie Ernaux and Photography’, published by MACK in 2024, to time with an exhibition of the same name, which she curated at MEP, Paris in Spring 2024. Stoppard holds a first-class BA in History from Oxford University, and an MA in Fashion from Central Saint Martins. She began her career at Nick Knight’s moving image platform SHOWstudio, where she became known for her live interviews with figures from across the fashion and photography worlds. Stoppard continues to host talks and panels, working with institutions such as the ICA and Studio Voltaire.
- The conversation will take place in the ‘souterrain’
- Language: English
- Admission excl. museum ticket: €12,50
- Limited capacity, please order a ticket through the link
Program
19h – Walk-in
19.15h – Start conversation
20.30h – Closing with drinks
21h – Museum closes
Language: English
Max. participantsLimited capacity, please order a ticket through the link
CostAdmission excl. museum ticket: €12,50
