K-Rol Cordier

Multidisciplinary artist
Chartres, France

I am a self-taught visual artist. I started my practice about twenty years ago.
In the beginning, I painted with acrylics, using a very limited color palette. My subject was always the sam, lighthouses, which I made my own in different ways. Later, I began adding characters to these paintings. Looking back, I think this early period was necessary, it was like a mirror of my own existence, as if the child I had been was finding a way to express herself through art.
I use simple, humble materials, paper, cardboard, found objects, things often seen as minor or without value. For me, this is a way to give them back their worth. It is also a metaphor, for a long time, women were treated the same way, as minor, as less important. Turning humble materials into something meaningful is a way to reclaim that value.
My work today focuses on my own direct line of women, my grandmother, and the women before her. By looking closely at each of their lives, I build a fuller picture of what it has meant to be a woman across generations. Their stories, joined together, reveal both the shared struggles and the different faces of that experience through time.
Travel has also shaped how I see and create. As a child, I moved often between countries because of my father's work, especially in Africa and Oceania. These early experiences still influence my work today.

For me, art has no frontiers, it can speak to everyone, everywhere.

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Kraft paper scroll, crumpled, layered, and dyed, 1 meter wide, 25 meters long. Chronos is a paper scroll. On it, I write down every year of my life, and each month in Roman numerals. The paper is crumpled, layered, and dyed. This gives it texture, like a surface marked by time. The scroll tells my story, but without details, only dates. This is done on purpose. It is simple, so that when people visit the exhibition, they can think about their own life next to mine. In this way, Chronos becomes a meeting point. It shows us that even without knowing each other's stories, we often live through the same moments, at the same time.

My work today is about the women in my direct family line, my grandmother, and 4 women before her. For this project, I made five accordion books. Each book is dedicated to one woman, starting with my grandmother. I chose to start there because I want to speak about women who were made invisible by history. These women worked hard. They stood strong through difficult lives. Because of them, we are here today. But under the law, and because of patriarchy, they were often made small, or made invisible. Through my art, I want to bring them back into the light, in an art gallery, so that people can come and discover them. They become visible again, even more visible. For me, this is a way to repair an injustice from the past.