Alone and far from home during lockdown, Anne-Sophie H. Plume found solace in painting an unusual subject—the canned goods she’d stocked up on in case of a food shortage. Stockpile, the artist's first solo exhibition, showcases intimate works teeming with vulnerability and unease.
“I spent the whole pandemic wanting to leave,” the French native said. “I hated being here because I was so alone.”
Plume moved from France to New York City two and a half years ago to study at The New York Studio School. Back in France, Plume focused primarily on abstract painting, but it was at the Studio School that she discovered her love for portraiture. “Coming to that school and starting to paint from the model, I realized how much I love to paint people. I started to paint portraits.” She happily painted models—many posed inside a clawfoot tub in her studio at school—working toward her MFA exhibition, until COVID began spreading across the world.
“In France the pandemic was much worse before it hit here, so my family [told me] 'you have to go into lockdown. You have to buy a lot of food…just stock everything.' And I did,” she recalls. “My whole family [said to] buy chickpeas, canned food, rice, and pasta. In France these were in shortage because everyone [was panic buying] everything. They told me in New York it’s going to be even worse, so I bought these things.... I have so much tomato sauce, a lot of chickpeas. My mom was all about chickpeas because [they have lots of] protein. I hate chickpeas,” she said laughing.
At the start of the year, Plume was living in Williamsburg with roommates who were not taking the pandemic or health restrictions seriously. “They were bringing people in. They would go out.” Carrying on as normal, her roommates were not social distancing nor following other COVID protocols.
A friend quarantining in Ohio offered Plume her empty Manhattan apartment to stay at for a while, away from her flatmates. “At that point I was like, 'should I go back to France?'" Plume wondered. But restrictions on travel and fear of losing her spot in the MFA program convinced her to stay and accept her friend’s invitation. “I went to Manhattan and just brought all my cans and all my paint,” Plume said. “I ended up staying there a month and a half.”
The first few weeks alone at the East Side apartment were difficult, with Plume feeling lonely and isolated. Accustomed to painting people, she also found herself without a model. “I was like, ‘I want to go home. I have nothing to paint.’ I was blocked for a while and then I started to make some totems with the cans.” Struck by the variety of colors on the packaging, Plume decided to paint the stacks of cans.
She began experimenting with her arrangements as she considered the uncertainty of the times, piling heavy cans on top of daintier items, creating haphazardly animated displays. “I was feeling that everything was crumbling down,” she said. The perilously stacked towers symbolize “a system that has proven to be worryingly unbalanced and fragile, each element at any moment could topple the rest to the floor,” Plume states in the press release for the show.
After returning to her Williamsburg apartment for a month over the spring, Plume relocated to Park Slope in July where she continued working on her Stockpile paintings on a larger scale, adding height and bulk to leaning stacks. Her implausibly teetering towers combine anxiety with whimsy, the daringly placed cans reflect a concerted effort to persevere. Plume's actual tin towers "fell down so many times," she recalls. "When they fell, it was so frustrating." The cathartic project helped her to cope with unusual circumstances and create a poignant and empathetic series documenting her experience.
It was about five years ago that Plume left her job in the pharmaceutical industry and spent the next couple of years immersing herself in dance and art. “I decided to try everything I never dared to try before,” she said. She found her calling in painting and initially came to NYC to take an intensive summer course at the New York Studio School in 2018. After completing the program, she was offered a scholarship for the MFA program. She is currently preparing for her Thesis Exhibition opening on December 1. Despite 2020 being a challenging year, Plume does not regret her decision to remain in New York City where she adapted and took inspiration from an unlikely source.
“I’m relieved that I did. Everybody had a tough time,” she said reflecting on the past several months. “I’ve been so lucky to be able to paint. It’s been great. I mean, I never would have thought of painting cans, ever.
Anne-Sophie H. Plume: Stockpile
Established Gallery, 75 6th Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Exhibition on view November 21 - December 5
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