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Potion vial
Collective exhibition from October 11 to 26, 2025
At Plateforme Gallery _ 73 rue des Haies, 75020 Paris
Wed – Sun : 3 – 7 pm
Opening on Friday, October 10, 2025 at 6:30 pm
Opening day: Performance by Clarice Calvo-Pinsolle at 7 pm
artists: Clarice Calvo-Pinsolle, L. Camus-Govoroff, Camille Correas, Yolenn Farges & Blanche Lafarge, Carole Mousset, Emma Prévost and Yan Tomaszewski
"From rivers to seas, glaciers to abysses, ponds to littorals, to the leaking drops from our immaculate taps, water seeps everywhere. Found in our tears, sweat, and mucous membranes, it infiltrates every pore to irrigate our submerged daily lives. Tentacular and viscous, it flows through ecological, political, and sociological breaches of our societies, shaping our realities as much as our futures. The Potion vial exhibition explores this liquid ubiquity through the works of eight artists who question the ties between mythology, environmental science, and hydro-becomings.”
Curator: Elise Bergonzi
Visual: Alice Hofer Oudot
Supported by Iceland University of the Arts and Wallonia-Brussels International.
The exhibition Potion vial is Elise Bergonzi's graduation work from the MA in Curatorial Practices program at Iceland University of the Arts.
Elise Bergonzi was born in 1997 in Paris, France. She lives and works between Nantes and Paris (FR).
Elise Bergonzi is a French-Caribbean artist and curator. She curates exhibitions and collaborates with art galleries. From 2023 to 2025, she was coordinator and co-curator of Scroll Gallery in Nantes (FR). There, her exhibitions included solo shows and group exhibitions. Independently, she has also co-curated several exhibitions in France and Iceland, such as the INFRA-GLOW exhibition at the Reykjanes Art Museum (IS) in 2023, autohistorias at the Palais des expositions des Beaux-Arts in Paris (FR), and Odyssea _ Acte 1 : Le chant des Sirènes in Marseille (FR) in 2024.
Elise Bergonzi frequently writes texts for artists and exhibitions. Her writings have been published in magazines such as Opium Philosophie in 2022. She also co-founded and hosted a radio series of interviews with artists and art professionals for the web radio DAM between 2019 and 2021. Since 2025, she is a member of CEA curators and studio manager for the artist Diane Cescutti.
Elise Bergonzi's work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Nantes (FR) in 2021. She received research and production grants from the city of Nantes (FR) and the CROUS des Pays de la Loire (FR) in that same year, followed by a grant from the DRAC des Pays de Loire (FR) in 2025. She has also participated in several group exhibitions in France and Germany. Since 2025, she is a member of the HyperTerrier Collective.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
"Water connects human scale to other scales of life, both unfathomable and imperceptible. We are all bodies of water, in the constitutional, the genealogical, and the geographical sense."
Bodies of Water, Astrida Neimanis. 2017*
Water transcends its elemental nature, dissolves boundaries, and shapes narratives, landscapes, and bodies. In Bodies of Water (2017), philosopher and cultural historian Astrida Neimanis takes us to the heart of the fluid. There, water carries memory and transformative powers, lingering languidly in our socio-ecological systems. From ancient narratives of humans and liquids to our spongy futures, it reshapes our existential concerns. This exhibition unveils aqueous thoughts, where phenomenology and poetry illuminate the symbolic and performative roles of water.
Mythologies have contributed to defining our contemporary social systems. By reactivating them, we can create neo-myths, where humans, non-humans, and environments intertwine in a fusion of fantastical narratives and aquatic sciences. The works in the exhibition thus dive into liminal narratives. Fables and technologies merge to transform our cultural perception of ecological and social realities.
In the exhibition Potion vial, fragments of fantastical biotopes, sacred deliquescent caves, and echoes of liquid ecosystems encounter river goddesses, chimeras, and amphibious mutants. Together, they brew love potions, cry mermaid tears, and invent futures imbued with healing hydrological processes. These narratives revive petrified myths and their fountains of youth, exploring the failures and possible cures of our damaged realities.
Through the juicy membranes of kelp blades, the Potion vial exhibition ventures in search of elixirs that will enable us to reach midnight zones, healthier socio-cultural and ecological territories. Like bubbles of resistance, these macro-spaces fight back by questioning the survival of our ecosystems. Thus charting paths towards other futures, they intertwine humans, non-humans, biospheres, and deep waters in relationships that are both resilient and symbiotic.
