Artists: Yoan Sorin With Marie Preston and the participation of classes from the schools of Cézanne and Pasteur in Embrun
Exhibition title: Qui pourrait nous emmener près du soleil?
Venue: Centre d’art contemporain Les Capucins, Embrun, France
Date: April 25 – June 4, 2022
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and François Deladerrière
Qui pourrait nous emmener près du soleil?1 Where, according to the fiery intuition of a child participating in the school residency, it would be possible to get close to the ideal place to learn and exchange. Marie Preston and Yoan Sorin, the invited artists this year, intervened with four classes in two primary schools in Embrun, Pasteur and Cézanne.
Qui pourrait nous emmener près du soleil? is both an experience and a collaborative exhibition which is underpinned by the question of transmission and its conditions, evidently within the school but also outside, pursuing the idea of an educating society. Marie Preston and Yoan Sorin have not so much defined a framework as imagined connections and new ways of making and learning with others: classmates, teachers, families and all those who wish to share their know-how.
Discovery is possible everywhere, here as much as anywhere else. For example, the children visited Le Gabion, a training centre for working with unfired clay on the outskirts of Embrun. They were also introduced to wickerwork by Lucile Bou, a craftswoman based in the Upper Alps. It was a matter of changing the way we look at things, creating the conditions for a change of scenery by learning new gestures, the physical understanding of materials and the sharing of intuitions. A sensitive exchange around the process of making, which, throughout the residency, was accompanied by moments of writing and feeding back impressions as well as emotions.
Marie Preston, whose artistic research focuses on practices based around co-creation, notably their link with alternative pedagogies, a subject of experimentation since the 1970s in France, proposed to the students and their teachers to produce a school newspaper based on the model imagined by Célestin Freinet in the first half of the 20th century. After adapting the professional printmaking tools for children, the educator had the equipment installed in the classroom. In this way, the students could use it cooperatively and document their ongoing activities.
Here, the artist-researcher suggested that the newspaper could be deployed in different forms: booklets and posters, widely distributed and disseminated in the schools and the village during the residency, as well as within the exhibition taking the form of an edition. Simultaneously, the Ram 05 radio station and the Dauphiné Libéré provided platforms for free expression on their respective media. Every week, in addition to discovering the inner workings of the paper press and the radio recording studios, the children delivered their impressions of the experience to the largest possible audience. This project could only make sense if it went beyond the context of the institution itself, namely the school and the art centre. It was essential to make the children’s voices heard outside the frameworks usually dedicated to them to mix amongst all the others.
The exhibition Qui pourrait nous emmener près du soleil? contains the story of its conception, having been invented on site, through exchanges with and between all the protagonists of the project. Before the residency, Yoan Sorin had no preconceived idea of the form it would take. This is one of his working habits, a way for him to be perfectly attuned to a place, its history and those who bring it to life. The artist draws as much on the artisanal practices he encounters as on the stories he hears. He translates the gestures, forms and words of others into an intuitive hybrid language.
Based on the drawings and free texts of the students, who regularly mention the cabin in the woods, the immense sun and the wild animals as the dream setting of their childhood life, he has constructed a condensed landscape in Les Capucins, in which everyone can project their desires regarding nature, conviviality and solitude. It is an abundant place, dotted with bridges, rivers and walkways, as well as many other possible paths of thought, because the history of this exhibition is not linear, because it is above all driven by the work of the imagination, whose terrain is always unstable and in movement.
With Qui pourrait nous emmener près du soleil? Yoan Sorin combines the singular with the plural, in the image of the large mural painting that punctuates the exhibition and is created in turn by all the students of the residency. By applying a few delicate lines of sky blue and watery green, the artist creates harmonious music in the charming and enthusiastic hubbub of the juxtaposed children’s drawings.
Solenn Morel
Translated by Jennetta Petch
[1] Who could bring us close to the sun?
