Laurence Aëgerter – A Contemporary Artist Between Marseille and Amsterdam

An International Journey and a Reflection on the Image

Born in Marseille, Laurence Aëgerter divides her time between her hometown and Amsterdam, the city she first moved to in the early 2000s to study art history.
Fascinated by images and their metamorphoses, Aëgerter invites us to look differently, to reverse perspectives and challenge the established order of perception—blurring the boundaries between signifier and signified.
Times and places merge, creating visual riddles where each layer of the image opens new paths for interpretation.
From enigma to enigma, the viewer follows an immersive treasure hunt—one that weaves through her entire artistic practice.

Archives, Mixed Media, and an Open Artistic Process

Drawing from the vast archives of photography, art history, or her own shots, Aëgerter builds works that are conceptually rigorous yet retain an instinctive, even childlike quality—making them both accessible and emotionally resonant.
In her hands, scholarship builds bridges between worlds rather than barriers. Museums and books become living mediums, tools for poetic reflection.
She questions the essential substance of the image—that endless stream of visual content saturating modern life—by engaging with a wide range of techniques, both artistic and artisanal.
Photography is central, but so are tapestry, ceramics, glasswork, cut-outs, collage, collecting… All become part of a joyful and generous visual dialogue.

Experimentation, Innovation, and Major Exhibitions

Aëgerter’s creative solutions are boundless:
– phosphorescent powder fused with glass, experimented with at the CIRVA (Centre international de recherche sur le verre et les arts plastiques) in Marseille, gave rise to Moirai – Fireflies of the Sea;
– herbal poultices as fictional rituals for healing wounded landscapes;
– the resurrection of near-forgotten techniques like lithophanes, crafted at the Sèvres National Ceramics Museum, in which enlarged daguerreotypes are turned into thin translucent porcelain plaques—images sculpted by light alone, visible only from behind.
One such delicate piece, depicting a sleeping child, was featured in her 2020 solo exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris, Ici mieux qu’en face, where she created resonances between historical collections and our present moment.

Collections and International Recognition

Laurence Aëgerter's works are held in numerous public collections in France and abroad, including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Musée Borély des Arts décoratifs et de la mode, the MAMAC in Nice, the Manufacture de Sèvres, the New York Public Library, the Paul Getty Research Center Institute in Los Angeles, the Spencer Museum of Art in Kansas, the Museum van Loon in Amsterdam, the Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, the Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, the Museum Het Dolhuys, Museum of Psychiatry and the Mind in Haarlem, the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden...