biography
Bourcart has been living in the United States since 2006 after growing up in Alsace, France. She identifies as French with Vietnamese heritage.
In her current multidisciplinary work with textiles, Bourcart uses unconventional materials such as cat fur, lint, and soil, elevating them into 2D and 3D objects, installations, and performances through knitting, felting, and embroidery techniques.
Bourcart's work has been exhibited internationally in numerous galleries and art venues, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, California, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, France, and Switzerland. Her photo-based works are part of France and New York museum collections. Bourcart participated in several art fairs, including Art on Paper, Art Wynwood, and Flux Art Fair.
She won the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award for exceptional achievement in Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in 2023. She's been awarded numerous grants, such as the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Uniqlo Park Expressions, and The Puffin Foundation.
She is a co-founder of the collective Art Forms Us created in 2020.
After being a self-taught artist for ten years, Bourcart holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts.
artist statement
I hail from Alsace, a region in France where my paternal ancestors thrived in the textile industry. On the other hand, my maternal grandparents come from modest backgrounds. My Vietnamese grandfather was a ‘Cong Binh’ (soldier-worker), was forcibly recruited from Indochina by France during WW2 and employed in bomb factories. His story remained ‘invisible’ and ‘silent’ despite the historical victory. Until recently, his entrance in France, like that of many people in similar circumstances, left no historic traces.
My childhood was marked by the striking contrast in how my grandparents’ backgrounds were acknowledged. While my father's lineage was glorified, my grandfather’s contributions remained silent, almost hidden.
This enigmatic disparity inspired me to explore the interconnections between such dissemblance.
Drawing from my family’s history, my goal is to create interconnection through the unexpected union of materials and techniques. As a gleaner, I collect various textural materials that lack commonality. They could be ordinary, overlooked, discarded or even repulsive and attractive, desirable, valued or rare. I assemble them together through a range of craft techniques such as felting, sewing, knitting and embroidery. Through this process, I provide these elements with a voice , encouraging them to establish connections and dialogues among themselves.
My work often is filled with encoded abstract content, acting as a bridge between the acknowledged and the hidden, the loud and the mute. It serves as an invitation to celebrate harmony by embracing diversity and nurturing dialogue.