Manipulating language and cultural objects with the element of RITUAL: collecting and bundling of detritus, often working directly in or with nature, Babette Beaullieu creates a sense of ceremony in her arrangements and performances. In dealing with place in a ritualistic manner, she draws on her experience of growing up in south Louisiana in a large Cajun, Catholic family near the Atchafalaya Basin which she first visited at age five. She began collecting objects and noticing that our physical collection of things engages us with place as well as sense of self. She views many of her installations and sculptures as altars – a place for reflection and honoring. Her work in this exhibit represents her obsessive practice of collecting objects and observing transitions. Artifacts is an installation of hundreds of objects hanging by string on small pieces of wood. The arrangement is archaeologically – found objects placed in observational rows: specimens of our 21st century living.
Beaullieu and modern dance choreographer Becky Valls have produced a series of stage performances entitled Chapters, which deals with family, memory, and identity in a cultural context. For a decade, this work was performed across the United States: Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Upstate New York.
Beaullieu was recently sponsored by the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. She created on Horn Island, a raft constructed from objects found on the beach of this uninhabited island in the Gulf of Mexico. The raft was built four feet above sea level suggesting the need to acknowledge rising waters.