Since 2013, Passerelle Centre d’Art Contemporain and Documents d’Artistes Bretagne has each year supported two artists from Brittany for a residency. Award winners are invited to live in Brest, devoting their time to the art centre workshop for a period of 3 months and producing a result in the form of a unique exhibition. Johanna Cartier (born in 1996) is therefore giving an account of her residency by presenting Turfur on the upper floor of Passerelle. A graduate of the École européenne supérieure d’art de Bretagne (European Academy of Art in Brittany), Rennes campus, in 2019, Johanna Cartier has for several years been developing works imbued with adolescent codes, resounding with popular music or examining rural landscapes with empathy and admiration.

After being swept away by her enthusiasm for dog shows, another type of animal competition has now captured the imagination of Johanna Cartier: that of the equestrian world. Bringing together films, sculptures and paintings, the Turfur exhibition is the result of observing this very specific world balanced between sport and gambling for money. This very masculine world is that of the betting shop, the bar of the locality or housing estate, and the national lottery kiosk. The design of these places is dated or kitsch, the atmosphere is that of a France that is and has been made invisible, lulled by always-on channels of information.

The title Turfur is a portmanteau word that can be read at several levels. Firstly, the English work ‘turf’ refers to land used for horse-racing and by extension to riding and activities related to racing. This title also evokes French ‘verlan’ reverse slang for ‘future’, as now widely used in urban argot, especially in rap. It also evokes the English word ‘fur’, an element – always synthetic with this artist – that she likes to use and which has a leading role in the exhibition. Finally, Turfur is a mantra, an exclamation from a world still unrecognised.

Through two films, this exhibition also provides an opportunity to reverse roles, situations and suppositions. The horse-rider is here boisterous and excited, whereas the biker rider of urban rodeos proves to be tender and attentive to his mechanical mount. Both share their position as heroes while being at the same time unsettling. They mix the interests, a priori, of the ‘bourgeois’ – the glorification of the equestrian arts – with those of the ‘guys from the estates’, such as their fascination for power on two wheels.

Turfur observes a margin of society that you pass every day, that of the crossroads by your workplace or on the way to the baker’s. You understand it well: behind the gaudy coloured shapes, the slogans and devastating punchlines, and the silky, cheap materials used by Johanna Cartier as the base for her vocabulary, an underlying class struggle with no goodies or baddies is being waged.