Julie C. Fortier. Le Temps pour horizon / Nicolas Daubanes. Nomen Nescio

( Sabotage 9, 2020), la poudre d’acier ou de fer qui rappelle les barreaux limés et qui dessine les contours de camps d’internement ( Les Milles en feu ou Toit de la prison Charles III, Nancy 1972, 2019) ou encore une table, simple et solide qui, détournée, devient scène de procès, sont autant d’éléments démontrant que le langage de la révolte, omniprésent, trouve toujours le support de son expression. Exhumé, tenace, l’oubli s’annule alors. Il cesse d’être l’innommable « nomen nescio » ayant donné son titre à l’exposition de Nicolas Daubanes et, à la manière d’un certain patrimoine des provinces françaises, raconte sa propre histoire.

Sandra Barré

——— There are surprising places where contemporary art, meeting heritage, stops time. Strangely, sadly, the public sometimes misses this rich dialogue. However, the quality of what is on offer isn’t in question, as the Château d’Oiron illustrates. It enjoys the rich “Curios & Mirabilia” collection of contemporary works, orchestrated in the 1990s by Jean-Hubert Martin. The famous curator took up, especially for the château, the idea of a cabinet of curiosities dear to Claude Gouffier, Henri II’s squire, who built the building. Since then, a special relationship has been forged between artists invited to model their works according to the site and the treasures it houses. Since July it has been the turn of Julie C. Fortier and Nicolas Daubanes, to whom the imposing walls have been entrusted, carte blanche having been given to them to explore what precedes us and grasp its substance. That’s what Julie C. Fortier has done by making it possible to appreciate this space full of history through the subjective, inner meaning of smells. A Franco-Canadian artist who has made emanations the physical site of memory and intimate reflections, it is through intersecting narratives that she has inserted herself into the interstices of these heavy stones, a written reflection of a past world ( LeTemps pour Horizon). Stopping to consider the graffiti that remain there, she discovered the outline of a bottle surmounted by the engraved caption “thubéreuse” [tuberose]. From there was born the first work, Fleur de Pierre [play on words on expression “à fleur de peau”, meaning sensitive, replacing “peau”, skin, with “pierre”, stone], where the enveloping and bewitching fragrance of the delicate white flower permeates a card offered to the visitor. Traces of those who have lived within the walls, the perfumes that unfold in the artist’s Fantosmies refer to the ghostly impressions, the energies that circulate in the places where history was built. Here, through the different bouquets they offer, they particularly evoke female figures who lived in the château, those who are perpetually forgotten. An oblivion which, in Nicolas Daubanes’ work, is neither material (scent), nor gendered (women), but social: the revolutionary act that each system has tried to silence. But the revolt doesn’t yield, on the contrary, it has created a whole set of signs that plays with the harshness of what is imposed. The concrete, maliciously sabotaged, because soft, by the French workers whom the Nazis forced to build the Atlantic Wall ( Sabotage 9, 2020), the steel or iron powder that reminds one of filed bars and that draws the outlines of internment camps ( Les Milles en Feu [The Milles Camp on Fire] or Toit de la Prison Charles III, Nancy 1972 [Roof of the Charles III prison, Nancy 1972], 2019) or even a simple, solid table which, when re-appropriated, becomes the scene of a trial, are as many elements demonstrating that the language of revolt, omnipresent, always finds the support of its expression. Unearthed, tenacious, oblivion is then cancelled out. It ceases to be the unspeakable “nomen nescio” [I do not know the name/anonymous] that gave its title to Nicolas Daubanes’ exhibition and, in the manner of a certain heritage of the French provinces, tells its own story.

Translation: Chloé Baker