Fragments d’un discours poétique
Underdogs Art Store, Lisbon (PT)
2015

In Fragments d’un Discours Poétique, Diane Giraud unfolds a constellation of nine original works on paper, each numbered and signed, that operate at the intersection of visual art and literature. Drawing on fragments taken from French and Portuguese poetry collections, she treats language as both material and motif—cut, layered, transposed, and reassembled into new visual sequences. Words drift, dissolve, and reappear; they trace the gestures of reading, the after-image of memory, and the fluid threshold where text slips into image.

The title carries an intentional echo of Roland Barthes’ Fragments d’un discours amoureux, acknowledging the influence of his reflections on desire, rupture, and the expressive power of the fragment. Rather than claiming affinity, the reference gestures toward a lineage of thought in which the fragment becomes a form of openness — an invitation for ambiguity, association, and multiplicity.

The project develops a quiet dialogue with poet Sónia Balacó, extending poetic exchanges into the visual field. Giraud’s compositions respond to the rhythms and architectures of language without illustrating them, proposing instead new readings, pauses, silences, and unexpected affinities. They invite viewers to inhabit the liminal terrain where language becomes matter.

A video accompanies the series, filmed in the artist’s first studio in Lisbon’s Príncipe Real neighborhood. It offers an intimate glimpse into her process — the tactile handling of paper, the choreography of fragmentation, the patient emergence of form. Together, the works and the film articulate a poetics of attention, shaped by the materiality of language and the emotional residue of reading.

Fragments d’un discours poétique
UNDERDOGS Art Store, Lisbon (PT)
2015
UNDERDOGS Live Sessions — Diane Giraud & Sónia Balacó
Launch of nine original works on paper, numbered and signed