Laurence Aëgerter’s practice begins with research and curiosity. Working with archives and existing images – from book illustrations, encyclopaedias, and art reproductions to documentary photographs and museum collections – she examines how images acquire authority and shape identity and collective memory. In what she calls a “transhistorical” approach, Aëgerter often brings historical sources into contemporary contexts, translating them into new forms and opening them to new meanings.
Her research methods developed during her studies in art history, where she learned to work intensively with literature and archives. Her graduation thesis on trompe-l’oeil in seventeenth-century Dutch painting established a fascination that continues to shape her practice: visual illusions, doubling, appearance and disappearance, and transitions from one state of reality to another.
Although photography often provides the point of departure, Aëgerter’s work takes many forms, including screen prints, woven textiles, objects, artists’ books, participatory projects, and site-specific installations. Aëgerter works closely with craftsmen such as master weavers and specialists in printing, ceramics, glass, wood, and metal, allowing their knowledge to contribute to the development of each work. For Aëgerter, materials are never neutral; textiles, wood, glass or bronze embody history, tactility and symbolism, and play an active role in the experience of the work.
In recent years, her work has increasingly taken the form of monumental, site-specific installations conceived in close dialogue with their architectural and historical surroundings. Recent projects for the Grote Kerk Alkmaar and the Musée Albert-Kahn extend her archival research into woven, spatial, and light-responsive forms.
Her work is held in collections including the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Getty Research Institute, MAMAC Nice, Museum Voorlinden, the Nederlands Fotomuseum, and Sèvres – Manufacture et Musée nationaux. She lives and works between Amsterdam and Marseille.