CAC Brétigny

“Bascules”
Off-site season 2024—2025
Curators: The CAC Brétigny team (Zélia Bajaj, Milène Denécheau, Léana Doualot, Elisa Klein, Danaé Leroy, Coraline Perrin, Marie Plagnol, Ekaterina Tsyrlina)

“Note to ourselves”
Installation by Fabienne Guilbert Burgoa at the Salon d’art of Marolles-en-Hurepoix
12.10—20.10.24

Fabienne Guilbert Burgoa designs immersive installations in which visitors are led to discover and activate setups. Favouring an intuitive approach to art, the artist devises intimate spaces both dreamlike and playful. She encourages visitors to take the time to absorb the poetry emanating from them, to try their hand at the offered experiences, or to simply abandon themselves to meditation. The choice of colours, forms and textures contributes to the creation of soothing spaces. This is a move away from the white walls and neutral spaces typical of contemporary art exhibitions, where only the gaze is welcome.

For the Salon d’art in Marolles-en-Hurepoix, Fabienne has conceived a sensory installation that visitors are invited to enter and experience. Once inside, they are encouraged to calmly settle in and manipulate the objects in the space. Completely covered in textiles, this room initially evokes the warm atmosphere of a living room. The walls are clad in a soft velvet, while the floor is covered with a cosy rug, woven by the artist using the tufting technique. This easy-to-learn craft makes it possible for anyone to weave downy carpets.

In the middle of the installation is a monochrome cube whose sides open up to unfold cushions. It houses a plant that one can comfortably lie down under. The artist suggests we take a break there, or even doze off. This is Fabienne’s answer to the call of Haitian-born writer Dany Laferrière, whose book L’art presque perdu de ne rien faire (2011) praises slowness in an ever-faster world, nonchalance for taking time to think, and napping to have energy for opening up to others. In turn, Fabienne invites us to dive into the dreamy state one can feel lying under a tree, to attain a calm conducive to letting one’s mind wander and drifting into imagination. The bodies lying under that tree displaced from its natural environment extend its roots, metaphorically evoking the movements forced by colonialisation, and the fragmented legacies of those descended from slavery.

Anyone who pays attention to the details will notice that Fabienne has concealed certain elements. By lifting pieces of fabric to find out what is hidden behind them, one gains access to fragments of a poetic story written by the artist. It sends us on a journey alongside a character who needs to use all of their senses to get around obstacles placed in their path. As the narrative unfolds, the visitors’ sight, touch, hearing and smell are engaged by the installation’s various textures and elements. The wool used to weave the carpet, which was naturally dyed by the artist, carries the scent of the plants that gave it their colour. The synthetic fable dreamed up by the artist connects the senses and reveals itself to people who lend their ear, bend over to touch, and crouch down to smell. If one dares to unfold the fabric bundles that the artist has left as gifts to visitors, one might even be able to leave something there in turn, a story to relay to the next visitors, or a trace of our having dropped in.

Fabienne Guilbert Burgoa (born in 1992), lives and works in Marseille. She graduated from the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy in 2017. Concerned about the museumification that is rigidifying oral cultures in the Southern Hemisphere, she began conducting collaborative anthropological research in order to create new narratives and common spaces that are welcoming and alive. She works on culture accessibility, and endeavors to build bridges between design and contemporary art through playful activation principles and intuitive affordances, as in MIMO, her first sculptural furniture collection. She has benefited from the support of the Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú (2016), the Museo Textil de Oaxaca (2017), the Collection Lambert (since 2022), and the Frac Sud (2023).