at the Castle - artists' residence, Centre International d'art et du paysage (CIAP) of île de Vassivière 87120 BEAUMONT-DU-LAC December 2016 - January 2017 The exhibition Droséra # La tentation du paysage (Drosera # The Temptation of the Landscape) returns a collective work carried out with college students from Collège Jean Picart Le Doux in Bourganeuf, in dialogue with the Droséra project that artist Julie Navarro has been developing for several years in the peat bogs of the Limousin. " Since 2014, Droséra # La tentation du paysage has been an exhibition conceived as an open and inclusive platform. In it, I invite researchers, artists, farmers, stonemasons, gardeners, schoolchildren, bakers, writers and musicians to work together. The process stage, with the involvement of the people I meet along the way and the highlighting of very specific subjects, is fundamental before freeing the forms of individual and collective imagination. In 2021, the Creuse peat bog community has been extended to the Latvian community with the Free Bog (tourbière libre!) project, thanks to the COAL Prize. An ADAGP grant - winner of the Research 2023 endowment - will enable me to extend, I hope, my painting work to the peat bogs of the North of England.
" It's first and foremost an intimate experience that I was physically confronted in the landscape of the Limousin peat bogs. Their timeless aesthetics, the dreamlike mists, the smells of humus and earth, the sounds of water scattered across the vast wilderness, the ripple of tall grasses, all absorbed me and made me enter into a dialogue with the surface of the landscape. Then I learned that millions of years had been inscribed in the shallow depths of the peat bogs. Peat, resulting from the slow, partial decomposition of sphagnum moss, sinks a millimeter every century, carrying with it a powerful historical density, from the Age of Christ (at a depth of one meter) to the Iron Age (two meters). Peat is a living memory that bears witness to man's past and future commitments: palynologists can analyze the pollen it contains and read in it the philosophical, political and spiritual links between man and landscape. It's this history of man and nature that I wanted to interpret and inscribe in a new aesthetic. From the ancient Greek
" covered with dew " , Drosera is a carnivorous peatland plant that traps its prey with its mucilage, which resembles dewdrops. The actions of mankind seem to be reflected in this plant, in the words of the Chinese philosopher Han Fei Zi: " The whole sky is reflected in a single dewdrop " .
Games of mirrors blur the lines and blur the boundaries between materials and images, sky and earth (Droséra la tentation du paysage painting). The past is no longer behind us, but beneath our feet. It rises discreetly to the surface, twirling in the sky (Les Inaperçus). The semi-aquatic landscape could take the form of the mysterious ocean of memories that envelops the planet Solaris in Tarkovsky's film. Creative emanations emerge in the course of conversations." Julie Navarro, 2016
Droséra was a finalist for the COAL 2015 & Artcop21 prize - Presided over by the jury: Claude d'Anthenaise, Chief Curator of the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, agnès b., stylist, Élodie Bernollin, Communications Director of Tara Expéditions, Philippe Cury, oceanographer, Anne Ged, Director of the Agence Parisienne du Climat, Emma Lavigne, former Director of the Centre Pompidou Metz. The project has received the support of the Emile a une Vache association, the Parc Naturel Régional de Millevaches, the DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine, the Rencontres de Chaminadour, the Clau del Pais, the Conservatoire d'Espaces Naturels du Limousin, the Communauté de Commune de Royère - Bourganeuf, the Institut des Études Occitanes and the Parc Naturel Régional de Millevaches.
THE ICE RIVER
Industrial bricks of Irish peat are assembled on the ground to form a strange trail of footprints that the wheels of a tractor might leave in its path. Does the trail lead back to our origins? Does the trail represent the icy river that carries the evidence of human history?
PEAT BRICK THROWING
International peat brick-throwing competition with students from Collège Jean Picart Le Doux de Bourganeuf at the Lachaud peat bog (Creuse), in collaboration with teachers Frédéric Lagarde and Sophie Noguet. In a choreographic posture, the students take turns tossing a loaf of peat into the celestial heights. The earth has left its original darkness. The photographic image fixes it in its cosmic trajectory. Slideshow click here
THE RECUMBENT FIGURES (TORNÀ)
" In dreaming of depth, we dream of our depth, in dreaming of the secret virtue of substances, we dream of our secret being " , Bachelard.
The tornà - lit. ghost in Occitan - were created in collaboration with teachers Frédéric Lagarde and Sophie Noguet, and students from Collège Jean Picart Le Doux.
The shovel's penetration of the earth is reminiscent of an ancient fertility rite, allowing us to " excavate " the subconscious. The peat sculptures, ranging in color from grey-black (close to mother earth) to russet-brown (towards the surface of the soil), have stood the test of time. Their degree of burial reveals a varied palette of color. Images printed on tracing paper are superimposed. Together, they generate a ghostly flow.
L'INAPERÇU
Les Inaperçus reveals impalpable emotions in the landscape, like an emanation from the depths of the soil. The series was born of the microscopic observation of pollen in peat. Matter and images merge.
COSMOTROUBLE
Writing workshop at Château de Vassivière - artist residency of the Centre International d'Art et du Paysage, with teachers Frédéric Lagarde, Sophie Noguet and students from Collège Jean Picart Le Doux. Intuitive wordplay, analogies and cross-dressing straddled the paths of the collective imagination. The result was the word Cosmotourbe, engraved by Pierre Nourrisseau in Creusois granite.
OMPHALOS
Assemblage of burning peat bricks, diameter 4 meters, height 35 cm
" The peat bog is wet: it is maternal water, it is the center, the Omphalos of the world. Both tomb and womb, the circle is a metaphor for death and birth, which meet at its center " . Seamus Heaney.