Camille Menard

A prisoner’s ball and chain, a pulley weight-training station, brightly colored tampon-balls… Through playful works laced with irony, artist Camille Menard—also known as Agnst Design—explores the contradictions of our time and subverts the icons of modern life.

Imagine a mirror placed too high to look into. To lower it, you must pull on two rings connected to a pulley system, performing a series of pull-ups. The harder you pull, the lower the mirror descends, allowing visitors, as Camille Menard puts it, “to indulge in the uninhibited narcissism of our time—while building muscle”. This deliberately functional artwork-machine perfectly captures the young artist’s critical approach: creating readable, direct devices at a time when certain forms of contemporary art cultivate distance and abstraction.

A graduate of the École supérieure d’art Annecy Alpes and École Boulle, Camille Menard, now 30, first gained attention by transforming everyday domestic objects into tools for measuring narcissism or our addiction to constant switching and distraction. Her series Self Esteem Shapers, conceived as part of her graduation project and awarded the Audi Talents prize, earned her a first exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in 2021.

Across her projects, Menard has developed a distinctive palette of primary colors—blue, red, yellow, and green—an unconscious nod to Italian radical design of the 1960s and 70s and to the Memphis movement. For the artist, however, aesthetics remain secondary: what matters most is conveying an idea, delivering a message. Yet this visual language plays a strategic role, immediately catching the viewer’s eye while inviting deeper reflection behind the apparent playfulness of the works.

Each series, typically composed of just a few pieces, explores a specific social phenomenon through form and function. “The ball and chain historically prevented prisoners from escaping”, the artist explains, “but what interests me is its symbolic dimension”. Connected to a phone charger, the object becomes a metaphor for contemporary alienation: “The ball slows down movement, whereas modern technologies—supposed to save us time—paradoxically accelerate the pace of life”.

To develop these conceptual detours, Camille Menard draws extensively on the social sciences, immersing herself in books, documentaries, and podcasts. A long phase of doubt and introspection precedes the moment when she finds the form capable of embodying her ideas. Production then follows, during which she gathers “all the components that will form the collage”. Many of her works, such as Batterie Nomade (2020), are assembled from reclaimed objects: a stainless-steel decorative garden sphere, a door knocker, an urban chain.

An emerging artist, Camille Menard now divides her time between exhibitions—such as Nuit Blanche and presentations at La Samaritaine and galleries including Aline Vidal, Chapelle 14 and Porte B. From her studio at the SIRA artistic hub in Asnières-sur-Seine—home to musicians like L’Impératrice and Polo & Pan as well as creatives such as Inès Mélia, Chloé Royer, David Douard, and Shahryar Nashat—she is currently developing her next project, devoted to the ideology of virility. •

photos: Camille Menard • © Margot Montigny • Batterie Nomade Sédentarisée, Camille Menard • © Camille Menard • Miroir Déroulant, “Domestic Games”, Camille Menard • © Romain Moriceau • Brain Dropping Remote, Camille Menard, 2020 • © Camille Menard