Through these two breviaries, Lucille Uhlrich and Simone Morgenthaler will evoke their relationship to the Alsatian language, both as author and sculptor, but also as mother and daughter. Through their mother—daughter relationship, they will discuss their relation to language and mother tongue, as well as their mutual influence on their own practices.

In 2015, Lucille Uhlrich was invited at CRAC Alsace to do a residency with students from Lycée Sonnenberg in Carpach. In her own words, her practice as a sculptor finds its source in the "original silence of childhood". It is in the withdrawal of this silence that she elaborates the graphemes of a secret language by which the meaning emerges and is incessantly nuanced in the deployment of polymorphic rebus that invite an intuitive and playful understanding. She is currently presenting a solo show at BF15, Espace d'art contemporain in Lyon and has participated in exhibitions at Centre d'art des Capucins in Embrun (2021), at La Villa Noailles in Hyères (2020), atLouis Lefebvre, High Art and Florence Loewy galleries in Paris.

Simone Morgenthaler is a radio and television host. Author of more than twenty-five books, in which she expresses her love of flavors, nature and life, she has been defending her native Alsatian language for over forty years. Her four most recent books are D'grien Schatt [The Green Shadow], Lulu-Wihnàchte ìm Elsàss [Christmas in Alsace], Ùnseri Schmüswertle [Our Sweet Words], Ùnseri Drackwerter [Our Saucy Words]. The third part of the trilogy dedicated to Alsatian words will be published this fall: Ùnseri Schìmpfwerter [Our Swearwords].

This talk is organized as part of Eye—Spark, a solo exhibition by Jonathas de Andrade curated by João Mourão and Luís Silva, presented at CRAC Alsace from June 16 to September 18, 2022.