Benoît Piéron finds subversive inspiration in illness. As a child, he was exposed to HIV/AIDS via a contaminated blood transfusion; as an adult, he survived cancer. Piéron’s traumatic stays in hospital define his art, most obviously in his repeated use of pastel-coloured hospital sheets.
In his latest exhibition, Slumber Party, at Chisenhale Gallery, these sheets are patchworked to form a fragile-looking canopy covering one corner of the space. They’re propped up by an outsize wooden table leg, to form a giant version of the blanket-forts we made in childhood, when some of us had slumber parties with our friends, if we were lucky enough not to be ill.
On the floor, a series of emergency response lights spin at different speeds, signalling danger. Above, some of the sheets are marked by stains left by the patients they once comforted, not quite eradicated by the hospital laundry. “The material is charged,” Piéron has said. “This is not my voice. This is the previous users of the sheets speaking.”
Piéron has also spoken of his artistic debt to Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who died of AIDS and documented his final illness in his art. There’s a shared lightness to these artists’ treatment of the heaviest of topics: Pieron’s airy fabric-and-light installation echoes Gonzalez-Torres’ elegant use of sheer curtains and light shows, his photographs of birds in flight.
In a final, deft touch, guarding the entrance to the gallery is a stuffed vampire bat called Monique. She’s a cute but sinister sentinel in familiar pastel colours. Visible on the top of her head are some fabric-printed words: HOSPITAL USE ONLY.
Happily, her creator didn’t obey that directive, and instead re-used the material for one of his small subversive acts against both the institution - and the illnesses it houses.