Judith Bartolani

She subsequently abandoned materiality and began working conceptually on politically engaged and polemical pieces, in collaboration with Claude Caillol. Their last collaborative work was the animated film Blister in 2001. From 2003 onwards, Bartolani was driven to explore buried traumas, to listen to the ghosts within her, and to provide them with suitable burial spaces, and began creating new funerary objects. Much of this is expressed in her book, Nos Funérailles, a book of stories, a swirl of words, pastels, charcoals, felt-tips and strikethroughs. It is a book in which a young girl named Sara tells the tale of her life, “a multitude of stories, whose first name is like a tattoo.”

Bartolani's most notable collaboration with the Fondation Cartier was for the exhibition Un, Deux, Trois... Sculptures: Judith Bartolani et Claude Caillol Ni Rond, Ni Carré, Ni Pointu in January 1989. Some of her more well-known works, such as Fantôme (1988) and Grand Disque (1983) are part of the foundation's permanent collection, and have been exhibited in  Histoire de Voir (1997), and Mémoires Vives (2014).