Mathilde Hess was born in 1983. After completing her studies at
Arts deco (HEAR) she joined Le Fresnoy to continue her
cinematographic work. She draws, writes and films in Paris
and in Vietnam.
At the very beginning, I drew. To prolong the hours spent in my picture books. To delve into landscapes, objects, faces, observed like enigmas, detailed with such attention that reality tipped into fantasy. I kept this relationship with the intrigued, withdrawn world, just as I kept the passage open between what we have before our eyes and the stories we invent.

At the beginning, there was drawing and writing, then photography, directing to continue the game, to tell stories, and finally cinema.

In the art schools where I spent my student years, HEAR, HEAD and Le Fresnoy, I created laboratories where I could explore and experiment with everything, different materials.
To ultimately keep only the words, the movement and the light;

and the drawing, if it is made of lines, dots, in Indian ink, of fine papers placed on bamboo structures.

In Asia, light constructions emphasize the porosity between the interior and the exterior, between the living and the dead, between animals and plants.

In Asia I learned to make room for what you don't see.

The air on which we land kites, the off-screen of photographs, the missing people that I try to keep between the lines of the texts that I write.

I've always walked very slowly, I liked to stroll before I knew the name for this activity. My Japanese dance teacher told me: you can recognize ghosts by their gait, they move very slowly.

Without any noise, without any jolt, I observe my own hands working, the gestures they invent in this space that I set up for them:

a wooden table, pages, inks, brushes, scissors, rattan and bamboo.

Hands tinker. I stand ready. Shapes appear. My job is to recognize them, to suspend them, to observe them.

They carry a spirit with which I dialogue, I listen. I cannot rush it.

Besides, I use materials that tear. Naturally, they guide the hands toward gestures that resemble those I observed so much, back in Asia. Softness, a softness that accomplishes, imperturbable.