Sharon Kivland
Jamais fille chaste n’a lu de romans, 2019
This tasteful and practical limited edition book bag was produced on the occasion of the exhibition by Sharon Kivland, Jamais fille chaste n’a lu de romans, at Circuit, Centre d’art contemporain, Lausanne, 2019. The work/s are structured on the education of women and women as readers. Jean-Jacques Rousseau sets the scene (‘a chaste girl has never read a novel’), with the display of volumes I and II of his epistolary novel Julie, or La nouvelle Helöise, originally published under the title Lettres de Deux Amans, Habitans d’une petite Ville au pied des Alpes (‘Letters from two lovers, living in a small town at the foot of the Alps’). The book was a wild sensation. Many readers would not accept it was fiction. The title of the exhibition is taken from a remark in his introduction, and is printed on the bag. The bag has a pink woven label with the artist’s name and place of exhibition, and has been sewn on by hand (yes, by the hand of the artist) in red silk.