Fidèles, fidèls
Fidèles, fidèls
End of residency exhibition
VENUE: Casino Display, 1, rue de la Loge, L-1945 Luxembourg.
Stand your ground. Loyalty is not a political construct. It is an underlying condition of resistance and revolutionary movements. Whether in political, spiritual, cultural, communal, familial, historical, or contemporary contexts, loyalty plays a role. It embodies the flexibility and nuance that promise both continuity and constant adaptation.
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In his research, Céleste Thouin sees loyalty as the need to question and confront his practice. Working with photos, videos, stories, archival writings, and traditional techniques, the artist compels us to question what continuity to hold on to in the face of what is not us, what is no longer us, and what it is that we aspire to be. In this context, loyalty, or fidelity, is therefore taken as a critical position to counter the risks of appropriation and liberal and reactionary recuperation.
The exhibition Fidèles, fidèls* is based on Occitan poems and songs, as well as objects like sentences made out of rust-red, brown, and ecru words. Through the creation of artisanal objects, Céleste Thouin traces the footsteps of a poetry that is somewhat dead, somewhat buried. His research at Casino Display is an exercise in attentiveness; first to the materials, then to their gradual transformation. Thouin engages in a multiplicity of working and manufacturing relationships: spinning large woolen tablecloths from fleeces purchased in the Pyrenees, collectively carded in Cantal, and then woven by Lily Weisgerber in Luxembourg; carving oak, sawing boxwood, and gluing spruce with Théophile Peris; and mixing manure and casting bronze with Alassane Dermé. All this as a strange way of sketching out the quest for a political and poetic position.
Photo © Théophile Peris
