Victor Schœlcher Series, Porcelain
Installation for group exhibition « Poétique du geste, » at la Graineterie, invited by Sonia Recassen and Maud Cosson | from January 20th to March 10th 2018
Gypsum plates, pigments and acrylic binder on walls and windows, various dimensions, 2018
A building always expresses its history, here, the name “graineterie (grain market)” allow me to approach there closely. I visited this place on last October, it was a discovery for me. The space was beautiful, full of natural light.
I am particularly interested in these space experiences memories. My work always takes its inspiration from the place within which it may be installed, in the heart of which it must be inscribe, in that sense to write upon what is already there.
This "already there" speaks through its existence itself, it speaks to whom can have a little attention, and I like to approach it within its materiality by my paintings after I took a step back for a while. It is a way to internalize the apace, to make a moment happen when I can interfere there. This step back is necessary to my research about the place and its territory, its geographic situation, its civilization, its nature, its habitants, their life, the life that flowed out and left the marks within the time. But certain marks has been subtracted to our view by lifestyles’ evolution, a modification linked to their poor standardization. I research on it, here I searched this city history and the peculiar story of one of its famous personnality that I finally kept. I have thought to find his history at the Victor Shoelcher’s house, but it was the municipal’s archives where I found the more interesting documents, engravings and objects. I sketched these images relating slavery, showing how Shoelcher was aware of it, but it was not their hardness that guides me toward my choice. It was two handwriting texts: a slave names list and the last letter Victor Shoelcher wrote.
I have finally selected a porcelain drawing, porcelain that was produced in Schoelcher's familial manufacture. It belonged to Victor Shoelcher’s father. These porcelains allowed his son's political engagement, their lines were written back on La Graineterie’s walls even before I have executed my work there.