chloé saffores

credits : djimi, Yury Beryozkin

2022 City of Unit (a destruction)

Chloé was invited to destroy the City of Unit, a city built in clay over several months by the artist sculptor Yury Beryozkin. The end of the residency is also the end of the venue Buropolis, where artists were being hosted. Here then, there is double destruction.

The performance begins by a bonjour from Yury to his audience. As the artist and the curator of his own work, he explains the process of the city’s creation and construction over a science-fiction-style 20-minute presentation with a chronological frise drawn on the walls of the room. He points to the piece in the center of the room. Each day of residency is the creation of an area of the city and its symbolic buildings (a parliament, a train station, a hospital, etc.). The story of this city is related to the sacrum as a symbol; Sex is War is written all over the place.

At the same time, in silence, Chloé caresses, touches, breaks, eats, and sits on every piece with delicate attention, savoring every moment. The destruction begins sensually, carefully, focused on details, and ends with wilder and wilder movement. Yury watches on as the relationship between Chloé and the clay amplifies toward annihilation. He must process and digest the end, containing himself while continuing describing the process of creation. Grief. Outside is the war in Ukraine. Three destructions.
The performance ends with a merci.

Yury Beryozkin (1991) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans ceramics, miniature creation, painting, performance, and video narration. Originally from Minsk, Belarus, he studied sculpture in Prague, the Czech Republic. His artistic journey has been deeply influenced by mythology, symbolism, and the unconscious, shaping a practice that bridges tactile materiality with surreal narratives.

During this residency in Marseille, he refined his approach to ceramic art, sculpting ephemeral cities from unfired clay—fragile yet resonant structures that reflect themes of transience and transformation. Alongside this, painting has remained his intimate space for exploration. Through oil on canvas, he unearths subconscious imagery, crafting distorted portraits and animal metaphors that exist in multilayered, dreamlike realities. His paintings act as psychological landscapes, where fluid identities merge with surreal archetypes, revealing fragments of personal and collective memory.

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