About 

Ludivine Thomas-Andersson is a contemporary conceptual artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans performance, installation, sculpture, painting, video, and sound art. At the core of her work lies an ongoing inquiry into the philosophical and existential dimensions of human experience, with a particular focus on the intersection between rationality and irrationality. She is deeply engaged with the absurd and the impossible, using these concepts to challenge prevailing ideas of success, productivity, and purpose.

One of her most emblematic projects, “Tricoter la Mer” (“Knitting the Sea”), serves as a powerful metaphor for futile labor. In this Sisyphean endeavor, Thomas-Andersson deliberately embraces a task that is inherently unachievable, positioning herself at the threshold between determination and absurdity. This act of consciously engaging in an impossible effort questions not only the nature of human ambition but also the value systems surrounding labor and efficacy. By elevating an activity traditionally associated with domesticity and undervalued feminine labor, Thomas-Andersson critiques societal norms regarding productivity and disrupts capitalist notions of purposefulness. Her work in this realm echoes feminist critiques of labor, placing the physical act of creation into a broader discourse about gender, resistance, and the body’s role in performing futile tasks.

Thomas-Andersson’s recent projects are pushing her practice into increasingly interdisciplinary and technologically mediated spaces, as seen in “Exploring Nonexistent Places”. In this work, she utilizes Artificial Intelligence to generate visual representations of the dreams of migrants—territories that exist only within the mind but are rendered tangible through algorithmic processes. Here, she explores the tension between the virtual and the real, the ephemeral and the tactile. By translating these AI-generated images into cyanotypes, she bridges the digital and the analog, creating a dialogue between the artificiality of memory reconstruction and the physicality of traditional printmaking. This cross-pollination of mediums underscores her interest in the fluidity of memory, identity, and place, particularly in the context of migration and displacement.

Dreams and the unconscious are recurring motifs in her work, acting as gateways to explore states of existence that lie beyond rational comprehension. Drawing from psychoanalytic and surrealist traditions, she investigates the liminal spaces between reality and illusion, where personal and collective histories intertwine. Through sound, video, and imagery, she probes how the subconscious manifests in both individual and societal narratives, often using dreams as an escape from or a reflection on social and political realities, such as the migrant experience.

Conceptually, Thomas-Andersson’s work can be seen as a form of philosophical inquiry into the human condition, resonating with existentialist thought, particularly the works of Albert Camus and the notion of the absurd. Her projects not only reflect a confrontation with the futility of human endeavors but also suggest a deeper critique of societal structures that dictate meaning and success. By continuously engaging with impossible tasks and pushing the boundaries of artistic production, she questions the very frameworks within which art—and by extension, life—is created and judged.

As her practice evolves, Thomas-Andersson appears increasingly invested in exploring the boundaries between the virtual and the material, the achievable and the unachievable, and the rational and the irrational. Her work stands as a testament to the complexities of human existence, persistently interrogating the fragile equilibrium between striving for meaning and embracing the futility of that pursuit. Through this, she positions herself as a critical voice in contemporary conceptual art, pushing the discourse surrounding labor, identity, and memory into new and uncharted territories.

Biography

Born in 1986 in the suburb of Paris, Ludivine Thomas-Andersson lives and works in Lesjöfors in Sweden where she settled in 2018. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at La Sorbonne University in 2008 and with a Master of Fine Arts obtained in 2012 at the prestigious Art College ENSAPC in Paris. She has since then worked as an artist. The year 2016 marked many important events: she co-founded the artist-run-space Tables.empty.workshop with her companion Benny Andersson in the town of Montargis (France), it also was the first time she was invited to an institutional artistic residence by the Drac Nord-Pas-de-Calais within the Lens hospital, and finally contributed to her first academic paper through the publication of “The Audience and the Power” by the Catholic University of Lille. Then, ultimately, she moved to Sweden. She became Art History Lecturer at the Örebro art school in Sweden in 2017-2018 and then moved to Lesjöfors where she devoted herself fully to the development of her art. Laureate of a FRESH-A.I.R grant offered by Berliner Lieben, she spent 6 months in an International Creation Residency in Berlin in 2021-2022. The National Art Council of Sweden granted her a one-year-work grant in 2022 that she devoted to the development of her “Knitting the Sea” while pregnant. She gave birth to her twin children in September 2022 and came back to the studio in early 2024.