Camille Henrot Questions Everything in Her Playful New Work

Though she works in a visual discipline, Camille Henrot is fixated on that which can’t be seen. “Society has an invisible structure that we aren’t aware of, because it’s the water we swim in,” the French artist told Artsy on a recent Zoom call, while in the midst of final preparations for her latest solo show.

This poetic account of the social order was offered in relation to Henrot’s new series of bronze sculptures, titled “Abacus.” Inspired by the ancient counting tool, these large, patinaed works are featured in “A Number of Things,” Henrot’s current solo at Hauser & Wirth’s 22nd Street location in New York (on view through April 12th). Together with new and old sculptures and collages also included in the exhibition, these works examine the structures that undergird our world—both visible and invisible—and question how and why they’ve become fundamental to our ways of living.

Systems of control and ways of structuring knowledge have long been concerns for Henrot. The artist, who was born in Paris in 1978 and is now based in New York, studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, graduating in 2001. Since then, she has become known for her multidisciplinary practice—spanning sculpture, painting, and film—that draws inspiration from sources including social media, literature, and psychoanalysis to underscore the anxieties that manifest in our globalized society. Henrot’s work has earned her several accolades, including a coveted Silver Lion award at the Venice Biennale in 2013 for Grosse Fatigue, an ambitious film that compiles imagery from Google and the Smithsonian to investigate the story of life itself.

Today, with “A Number of Things,” Henrot draws attention to systems that govern perception and experience—from the days of the week to the way numbers signify values—and highlights their arbitrary nature. For the “Abacus” sculptures, for example, Henrot literally and conceptually bends the familiar form of the calculating device, which consists of beads that are slid across rods set inside a frame. The work 1263 / 3612 (Abacus) (2024) contains three bronze posts resembling those of the tool, each stacked with bead-like rubber rings. However, Henrot has removed the posts from the abacus frame and installed them on the floor. Their ends curve, as if being pulled or blown in the wind. “By making the works look baroque and beautiful, but also childish and broken, it’s a way for me to show that systems can’t be taken too seriously,” Henrot explained.

Indeed, the works in this series also evoke children’s maze toys with colorful wire loops and wooden beads. For the artist, the association stirs a sense of potential. “When I see these works together, I see that the show is about movement and energy of growth,” she said. “Plants, animals, children, we all grow from a coiled seed shape into a bigger, larger shape. Knowledge grows, too.”

The exhibition design furthers this association with play and growth. Henrot worked with the architecture firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero to install a green, gridded rubber floor in the gallery, which calls to mind the tiled rubber mats of playgrounds. The flooring modifies the way visitors walk, creating a softer ground that adds a slight weightlessness to their feet. It also reduces noise, absorbing sound so visitors feel contained. “Even a subtle change can make people question something. The gallery is a new environment that is separate from the one outside, and by changing the floor from the same one used in every other gallery, it makes the visitor stop and think,” she said.

Henrot also investigates more overt and oppressive systems of order in “Dos and Don’ts” (2021–present), a series of mixed-media collages. Each of these works consists of layers of painted and printed elements, including excerpts of text dictating what the viewer should and shouldn’t do. Portions of these messages are echoed in the titles, such as Dos and Don’ts – How to Shake Hands (2024) and Dos and Don’ts – All the Bridesmaids a Present (2024).

Henrot found these directives in etiquette books—obsessive guides to acting with decorum. These books imply an unseen authority who determines that we must act in one way and not another. They leave unclear what happens when someone breaks a rule; instead, we are conditioned to self-police simply by knowing what we should and shouldn’t do. Additionally, the rules reinforce class systems by excluding those without access to accepted codes of behavior, or without the ability to abide by them. “Humans made these rules, but they are completely arbitrary,” Henrot said. “The more you read them, the more absurd they become.”

Another body of work featured in “A Number of Things” is Henrot’s series of whimsical dog sculptures. With nearly a dozen examples in the show, this body of work speaks volumes about Henrot’s practice and her interest in manufactured order. The sculptures represent a variety of materials and breeds: Schoggi (2024) is a sleek steel version with a long snoot, perhaps a borzoi; Francesco (2024) is a stout, carved wood example resembling a pitbull; and Richelieu (2023) is an Irish wolfhound made with steel wool, wood, and textile.

“Living on the Upper West Side, I see dogs of so many different shapes and sizes,” Henrot said. “These dogs—as domesticated animals—have been designed by humans to fit our needs, transformed over generations in their own manner of systems.” Notably, her dogs all wear leashes, representing both the bonds between humans and their pets and the somewhat sinister nature of control and surveillance.