“I want to shatter the image of the bohemian artist, disconnected from the world and economic reality.
I want to show that, on the contrary, artists are powerful, not only in their practice but also in their ideas and capacity to work.”
So much for the cliché of Parisian artists surveying the city rooftops from cramped garret ateliers. When artist Margaux Derhy comes to fetch me from the courtyard of a building in the lively 10th arrondissement, we take the lift down into the network of caves — the cellars where occupants of the apartments above traditionally store their wine.
Despite the lack of natural light, Derhy’s subterranean studio is cosy and inviting. The walls, floors and ceilings are coated entirely in undulating white plaster: it is far more reminiscent of fishermen’s caves found in the cliffs near Derhy’s house in Massa, Morocco — where her father is from, and where she spends the winter months — than the French capital where she was raised.
The way her working environment challenges expectations is apt. Alongside her career as an artist, Derhy, 38, is also the founder of Le Cercle de L’Art, an all-female collective that is rethinking the way artists navigate their careers ...
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