"I throw nothing away: between salvaging and saving. It’s a hangover from peasant culture: give a function to the slightest thing, however neglected; transform everything, including waste. And then there are winter obsessions: fear of the cold, of movement, of the outside; life in slow motion, confinement, numbness. 
So I obsessively perform the same gestures: braiding, rolling, accumulating, the braid, the braid in a ball."
Taken from Marinette Cueco, Pierre Vannier, Hivernages, cat. exp. l’ARC, Le Creusot, 1991. 

Marinette Cueco is an artist, but no less of an erudite amateur botanist. 
She can name plants with their Latin names and vernacular ones, and she describes her practice as an extension of life on the land. Her homeland is in Corrèze. Through wandering around and observing this territory, and through hiking, Marinette Cueco has extracted from it her preferred materials: vegetation. She has intimate knowledge of the land, and of the best spots for mushrooms—a closely guarded secret. For each plant, she knows where to pick it, how to dry it and, above all, how to involve it by summoning the sentient into her artistic undertakings, while taking care to use the whole plant, from stem to leaves, buds to pistils, petals to stamen, and throw nothing away. Her artworks are at once highly expert and apparently fragile. She shows that another relationship to vegetable matter is possible.
In an attempt to reset, some people take their quest to remote communities that have refused development. Marinette is here, very close to us, just a glance away. matali crasset

The exhibition at Les Abattoirs is centered on interweaving, near-solid or abstract geometrical compositions made using dried rushes.