Thierry Boutonnier, born in 1980 in the southwest France, grew up in his parents’ dairy farm. A farm worker, he financed his studies at the National School of Fine Arts in Lyon and at the Concordia University in Montreal. Graduating in 2005, he then took off to Portugal, New Jersey, Lower Normandy and the Tarn. On the strength of intense cooperation, he carries out actions and objects in interdependence with ecosystems such as Lausanne Jardin (2009), Naturel Brut (2010) or Polyculture (2011). His work has been shown in Canada, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, at the Paris Biennale (2006) and that of Rennes (2010) or at Fiac (2011). In 2010, he won the COAL art and environment prize for his project “Take roots!”, In Lyon, and has since collaborated frequently with COAL.

For the Grand Paris Express, he created Appel d’Air, a perennial, lively and sustainable work that accompanies the Grand Paris Express from the first site in 2016 until the opening of the entire network in 2030. The work Appel air is designed in tandem with the architects Pauline Marchetti and Jacques Ferrier, consultants in architecture and design of the Grand Paris Express stations.

He conveys a wide range of different behaviors in reaction to the capitalist system: analysis, play, combat, mimesis, resignation, irony, crisis…; Considering that artistic acts have the same demands in terms of project or portfolio management (in terms of know-how, decision-making process, sharing, production / distribution, storage, innovation, etc.). He is a non-specialist artist who employs a “multi-tasking” attitude; capable of various means to adapt to the constant changes of the real competitive economy: performance, videos, sculptures, images and photographs, diagrams, publications…