Prune Nourry, born in 1985, is a Paris and New York based plastic artist. A graduate of the École Boulle, she has made sculpture the backbone of her practice. In collaboration with artisans, she works with various materials and explores new techniques. Her pieces are large in size and produced in situ, and she destroys, buries, or stages them in documented rituals through photo and video. Her work asks scientific questions that she turns into artistic material. In 2009, Nourry launched a series of performances, the Procreative Dinners, bringing together art, gastronomy, and science, during which participants were invited to reflect on assisted procreation and human selection by designing their child à la carte over the course of the meal. In 2010, the artist developed an Asian trilogy on gender selection bias against girls and the resulting demographic imbalance. Her army of 108 sculptures, the Terracotta Daughters, toured the world before they were buried in a secret location in China. Their excavation will pace in 203, the year in which the female deficit is expected to peak.
The notion of balance - whether biological, ethical, ecological or the balance of the body in connection with illness - is at the center of Nourry's thought process. Her own diagnosis of breast cancer in 2016 brought her back to a more introspective artistic approach. During her treatment, she directed a feature-length documentary, Serendipity, which was released in theaters in 2019. She then created Catharsis, a series of artworks including a 5-meter-high Amazone, sculpted in a cathartic gesture and covered in incense sticks - both restorative needles and healing offerings.