Concept
Tania Mouraud (born January 2, 1942, in Paris) is a contemporary French video artist and photographer. Tania Mouraud began her artistic career at a young age as a painter. Later on, she shifted towards photography, continuously growing her portfolio. In the late 1990s, she created her first videos. Her work heavily features themes of anguish and responsibility, drawing from her personal mourning. Mouraud's interest in videography eventually led to her to express her work through audial performances. She founded Unité de Production in 2002 for her sound performances, but embarked on live solo performances only after a few concerts with the group. She produced various video installations, including Ad Infinitum (2008), Ad Nauseam (2014), and a collaboration with the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM). In 2015, the exhibition: "Tania Mouraud. A Retrospective." was shown at the Centre Pompidou-Metz. Tania Mouraud was born in Paris on January 2, 1942. She is the daughter of Martine Mouraud, journalist, publicist turned businesswoman, and writer. Her Romanian-born father, Marcel Mouraud, was a lawyer and collector of modern art. Both her parents were a part of the French Resistance. She was exposed to art at an early age from her family's travels. She moved to England and then to Germany, where she discovered avant-garde art. Mouraud was influenced by various artists, including Zero, Beuys, John Cage, Gregory Corso, and John Coltrane, additionally befriending artists Gotthard Graubner and Reiner Ruthenbeck. In the late 1960s, she lived in New York, where she met artist Dennis Oppenheim, bringing her into contact with the New York art scene. Her first exhibition took place in 1966 at the Zunini gallery in Paris where she exhibited her peintures médicales (French for "medical paintings"), a notably intentionally unemotive collection of human drawings. She commented: "If my painting is intentionally schematic it is because I want to escape the pathos in the search of precision. I like that which is clear.
