At Night the Stones Watch Us
For more than ten years, the artist Fanny Mesnard has been developing a phantasmagorical universe inspired by the living world. From an ecofeminist perspective, she proposes to care for not just us but also everything around us. As we enter the exhibition La nuit les pierres nous regardent, we are welcomed by an image of a forest permeated by eerie light. The forest breathes: it is alive and inhabited. That is why we may be scared to walk through it alone. Importantly, this image acts as a portal that leads us toward dreamlike, fantastic places, if we have the courage to venture down the path that Mesnard has imagined.
In this new body of work, Mesnard takes inspiration from her recent trips to Norway, northern Québec, and Charente, where she was born. Though seemingly different, these places provided material for a new world to map out. During her visits, she was nourished by her observations on the land, her walks in the forest day and night, the flora she discovered, the motifs found on traditional clothing, and her readings of tales and legends that expressed a collective imagination. She wove links among these fragments of territories by integrating them into her works: drawings, paintings, ceramic sculptures, performances, textiles, photographs, and videos.
Mesnard builds a narrative thread from recurrent motifs (snails, water lilies, tables, hands, hoodies, and more) inspired by revisited tales in which liminal creatures, in incongruous stances, emerge to explore places. Are they dancing? Are they performing a ritual? By creating these characters with an intentionally open meaning, Mesnard invites us to see the world from other angles, to imagine how they might live in new territories. Now, it’s your turn to take the path wending through this metamorphosed exhibition space by becoming, in your turn, a part of the living story.
Exhibition design: Cooke-Mesnard