An artist residency at Andover Library invited families to explore "strangeness" through art.
Chapel Arts Studios hosted the residency at the library on November 1 and 2, featuring Dr Laurence Dubé-Rushby.
The French artist, who has lived in the UK since 1996, was inspired by the Venice Contemporary Art Biennale 2024 theme, 'Foreigners Everywhere'.
She invited the public to "explore, confront, and embrace strangeness and the uncanny through the transformative power of art".
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She completed her doctorate in creative pedagogy and performance art at Arts University Bournemouth and University Arts London in June 2024.
Her practice explores themes of environmental ethics, heritage, education, printmaking, textiles and performance art.
The residency at Andover Library, guided by the theme 'We Are All Stranger-Artists', invited families and children to engage directly with these ideas through mixed-media performances, mask-making and printmaking activities.
Dr Dubé-Rushby's work celebrates the diversity of creative expression, echoing the Biennale’s focus on "the self-taught artist, the folk artist, the craft maker, and the artista popular"—those who have historically been perceived as outsiders in their own communities.
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Her interactive performance-installation encouraged participants to embrace the stranger within themselves, weaving their unique stories into a shared and evolving collective narrative.
During the residency, participants had the opportunity to interact with a film projection that Dr Dubé-Rushby created during her British Council Research Fellowship residency in Venice in 2019.
This immersive piece encouraged viewers to step into a world connected through water, air, stones and earth—inviting a deeper understanding of how art allows us to encounter and inhabit the perspectives of others.
Dr Dubé-Rushby's work has been showcased internationally, including in Ecotone, a performance and film presented at the British Pavilion Basement in Venice in 2019.
Her practice is grounded in social engagement and participation, exploring how art can become a means of resistance and reflection.
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