Claire Mayet, born in 1979 in France, lives and works in Geneva (CH). She graduated from HEAD-Genève in 2002 with a Bachelor’s degree in ceramics, which was awarded by the Fond Cantonal d’Art Contemporain. Her work deals with the series, the reproduction and the misappropriation of objects, mainly through moulding. It was exhibited at Halle Nord in 2009, at the Baz’art festival in 2010 and Le Commun in 2013, in Geneva, and was selected for the Vallauris Biennial (FR) in 2014.
In 2016, Claire Mayet undertook a new professional training at the HEAD-Genève at the CERCCO and obtained a DAS in ceramic and polymeric realization, which allowed her to open up to other fields of exploration, enabling her artistic work to gain traction. In 2017, it was exhibited at the Musée de Carouge (CH) among the winners of the International Ceramic Competition and at the Officine Saffi Gallery in Milan (IT) among the finalists of the Open to Art competition in 2019. That same year, Claire Mayet exhibited at Art Genève and the Kunst(zeug)haus Museum in Rapperswill-Jona (CH). She also created outdoor installations in the Alpine Botanical Garden of Meyrin for the Fond d’art contemporain of Meyrin (CH) in 2018 and for the Ailyos nature art festival in Leysin (CH) in 2020.
Along with her sculptural practice, Claire Mayet is involved in the creation of offbeat and participative artistic events, such as the ghost trains that she had been organizing since 2005 for both social and cultural structures, such as the Printemps Carougeois in 2016 or the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Genève in 2021. For ten years, she has curated the visual arts for the festival Baz’art, a multidisciplinary art festival in Geneva, a role for which she was awarded a grant for mediation in contemporary art by the City of Geneva in 2016. In the same year, Claire Mayet was awarded a grant from the Bruckner Foundation for the promotion of ceramics, which allowed her to spend three months in residence in their studios in Carouge (CH).
In 2020, she obtained a grant from the City of Geneva for artistic research, which was recently shown at the Milkshake Agency in Geneva and the C14-Paris exhibition (FR). Since July 2021, she has been a scientific collaborator at the Musée de Carouge and was curator of the exhibition around the 18th edition of the International Ceramic Competition of the City of Carouge.
Visit Claire Mayet’s website and Instagram page.
Featured work
Selected works, 2015-2021
Engaged in studio practice, Claire Mayet approaches the subversion of objects and situations in order to create absurd, poetic, and burlesque scenographies and sculptures. Using various materials, DIY techniques, even hobbies, or much more advanced means, she manipulates the everyday with a sense of spontaneity. Fascinated by tools, gestures and know-how, she develops a kind of “savoir-faire of the self,” which guides her artistic research in a singular way.
