Les petites annonces is French for means “the classifieds”.
“It’s where you go to ask for your lost cat,” says Edith Perrenot. “Ordinary facts, big love, big despair, the trashy, the poor, the lost.”
If you’re not yet familiar with the Tasmanian-based French art and performance duo Les Petites Annonces, you will be soon. They will burst into your life like a cannonball of confetti. You won’t be able to miss them.
I first encountered Julia Drouhin and Edith Perrenot at Mona Museum where we were part of a group of actors, dancers and musicians performing for the Faro Experiments. The shows of Julia and Edith typically involve (but are by no means limited to) French nursery rhymes, megaphones, soft toys, giant sunglasses, dozens of patterned scarves, Edith Piaf songs, whipped cream, painted cardboard constructions, hats, bells, fur jackets, plastic props, tap shoes, whistles … the list goes on.
For one of their most memorable numbers, Edith sings the Juliet Greco song Déshabillez-moi (“Undress me”) while Julia slowly swaddles her with scarves and gloves. Once fully smothered, Edith exits the room atop a pink skateboard. In an increasingly minimalist world, the duo’s unashamedly maximalist aesthetic is very refreshing.
I chatted to Les Petites Annonces at Julia’s art-filled home, perched on a hill in North Hobart overlooking the city and the Derwent. It’s a house she shares with her Dutch husband Arjan, their children Sanne and Leandre, Arjan’s mother Frieda, and their cat Potato. Joining us for afternoon tea was the duo’s close friend and collaborator CiCi Zhang, a Chinese artist and musician (you can expect to hear more about CiCi in a future article).
Julia moved to Australia eight years ago. Arjan grew up in Tasmania but it was Julia’s decision to relocate the family from Paris to Hobart. She had “dreamt of a special life close to nature” ever since a winter visit to the island when she was 25 and pregnant.
An artist and curator from France, Dr Julia Drouhin has had her work presented in Europe, Hong Kong, Brazil, South Africa and Australia. Much of her current work is in sound performance, “radio, cabaret, improvisation, singing, running around, that’s me”. She also plays the petit cristal baschet, a vibration instrument from the 1950s where sound is produced by rubbing glass rods with wet fingertips.
Julia seems to move through life surrounded by a tremendous quantity of brightly-coloured props. In contrast to the visual overload, she brings a calm and ethereal quality to Les Petites Annonces’ performances. Meanwhile, Edith brings the fire. Both onstage and off, Edith is impassioned and powerfully captivating. Her nickname is Storm. A visual artist and vocalist from southern France, Edith tells me she is increasingly moving towards “living art, touching on theatre, clown, variety, cabaret. I’m totally addicted to writing shows, it’s my big drug, like yeah let’s do a new one!” Her boisterous enthusiasm for creating art is infectious.
Edith moved to Tasmania nine years ago when a French friend she knew from high school started a wool mattress business on Bruny Island and invited her to work there. “Nothing happened that way – I’ve never made a mattress in my life,” laughs Edith. But it provided the impetus she needed to leave France. Edith knew that moving to a new country was necessary for her growth as an artist.
Before living in Australia, she only spoke French. “It was a big flaw for my art practice,” she confesses. “I thought, ‘How can I have an opinion about something global when I can’t actually manage to speak another language or discover another culture?”
Julia and Edith are so aesthetically and artistically matched that I assumed they were childhood friends. It turns out they met just four years ago in Tasmania at a Contemporary Art Tasmania exhibition. The dress code for the opening party was “pink or white noise”. Edith was one of the few attendees who dressed up. She even convinced her partner Dan to pour white flour on his dreadlocks. Julia was impressed by their commitment and from that night onwards they were friends.
Artistic collaboration began in 2019 when they accepted a Tasmania Performs artists’ residency at Tarraleah. The concept – wait for it – was to found a “Pastafarian" church.
“Julia has this big garage, and we thought we could just do an orgy of pasta in the garage,” Edith says matter-of-factly, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to think up. “So we started Les Petites Annonces … we have not started a Pastafarian church yet.”
Part of the reason Julia and Edith’s work is so compelling is that it subverts and explodes French stereotypes. As Edith says, “We don’t look like the portrait of the tall Parisian, skinny, minimalist, a bit snob. They are the cliche, but most of us stand at one metre fifty six, we have a big bottom, we put weird things on our heads, but we are still French! You wanted the baguette, instead you got beautiful pain de mie (sandwich bread)!”
Julia says the duo would never have created the type of art they make if they had stayed in France. “Here I realised that I had something special, my otherness. And suddenly, I could be totally me. In France I was always playing music in the dark so nobody would see me – I was really self-conscious. I realised being here that I could explore other things.”
Edith feels a similar freedom working in Australia. “In France, if you say you are doing something, you need to somehow prove you're the best at it. Here, you are free to love doing anything.”
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Hearing Edith and Julia speak about the freedom of being in a new place reminds me of my own time overseas, the 10 years when I was moving from Australia to the UK, US, Singapore and China, before returning home as COVID began. During those years I craved the freedom that a sense of “otherness” brings. I still feel that otherness sometimes in Tasmania, having spent so long abroad, and being a product of several cultures.
Edith puts it beautifully when she says, “I think by changing territory you meet a new version of yourself. I think I have always felt strange, but the fact of being a stranger means you don't have to justify it anymore. [In your home country] everyone around you demands that you fit somewhere. But when you are elsewhere, you don't need to fit in. You can be fully strange.”
Even in her personal life, Edith felt that the only relationships that would work were with people from other cultures. Dan, her partner of nine years, is from New Zealand. “I think beauty is between things,” says Edith. “Anything that is working is in the friction between things. I think strange is the only space we are pure beings, and happiness can be.”
The two also see themselves a bridge between cultures. One of my favourite moments in their live shows is when Edith Perrenot performs Edith Piaf songs. As Julia says, “Looking at her singing Edith Piaf I actually think, ‘Wow she's actually very, very French and elegant.’ ”
“There is still a part of me in France,” says Edith, “but when I go to France a part of me is here.”
In the weeks following our conversation, Edith and Julia are hard to keep up with. They perform at Mona Foma in Launceston as part of a trio called Dinette & Confetti with talented Tasmanian harpist Emily Sanzaro. And they launch an exhibition called Fair Distancing at Good Grief Studios in Hobart, exploring offbeat ways to socially distance while staying connected. One of the pieces of art on display is called the Squeeze Machine. It’s a chair attached to a device they have built with wood, boxing gloves and various levers and pulleys which aims to “reproduce the comforting feeling of a hug”.
Les Petites Annonces are unstoppable and prolific. Personally, I’m still holding out for their Pastafarian church. Who wouldn’t be enticed by an orgy of pasta?
You can follow Les Petites Annonces on Instagram @lpa_les_petites_annonces or visit edithperrenot.com and juliadrouhin.com.
Stephanie Jack is an Australian-Singaporean actor and writer. She has lived in six countries and on board a yacht. She is a graduate of Harvard’s American Repertory Theater Institute, and the creator of Mixed Up, a YouTube series exploring mixed race identity. More about her can be found at stephanie-jack.com.