Octopus Initiative Artist Viviane Le Courtois
Viviane Le Courtois’s practice is process-based, conceptual, and often participatory. Her installations, performances, sculptures, videos, and prints often intrigue visitors by connecting art to everyday life. Her works often comment on social and environmental issues. She has traveled in over 41 countries using 221 pairs of shoes as a sculptural performance. In 2004, she invented a non-toxic etching process using kombucha. For this new series of etchings, she first grew kombucha cultures in sculptural ceramic vessels to create new shapes and compositions. Continuing to use her own culture, she makes these natural etchings with a combination of time, chance, and patience, ending with the traditional intaglio printmaking techniques of inking and hand wiping.
Le Courtois was born in Lesneven, France in 1969. She moved to the US in 1994 and currently lives in Denver. She received a Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique from the Ecole Pilote Internationale d’Art et de Recherches at the Villa Arson, Nice, France in 1992 and an MA in Art History from the University of Denver in 2000. She was awarded a Korea Foundation fellowship in 1993 and the Westword’s Mastermind Award in Visual Arts in 2009. She has exhibited in France, Ireland, across the US, and at many venues in Colorado including Rocky Mountain School of Art + Design, Regis University, RedLine, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, the Denver Botanical Gardens, and the Center for Visual Arts (Metropolitan State University). In 2012, she presented her first solo museum exhibition Edible? 22 years of working with food at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. She has since created site-specific interactive projects for the city of Boulder, the Biennale of the Americas, the Denver Art Museum, and Neo Rio. She was an artist in residence at RedLine from 2008 to 2011, at Sustainability Park from 2011 to 2014, and at the Denver Art Museum in 2016. She created a permanent installation at Meow Wolf Denver for their opening in 2021. Le Courtois is also a curator, a teacher, and a world traveler.
