Language is omnipresent in Léonard-Contant’s work: clearcut and implied, present and absent, as much felt as it is seen. It is palpable even when her work wanders on the verge of comprehensibility, as she navigates the nonverbal, meticulously articulating shapes and surfaces, textures and space.

Carefully chosen materials – bamboo, sand, punctuation marks, silk, fonts, insulating film – build a syntax through which meaning ferments and narratives unfold. Naming and describing – ferns, fog, gestures, territories, memories, hills – fosters intimacy with things, both paying tribute to them and bidding them farewell.