The second prize of the 2016 Cité’s call for creation goes to the plastic artist Marie Sirgue for her project Bleue, a tapestry project of 2m x 3m, which, in the preciousness of its weaving, will pursue to give the illusion… of the pettiest of the construction site’s tarpaulin.

Marie Sirgue lives and works in Toulouse. Multi-medium, her work questions mankind and his uses. From a project, she will go and look for the most appropriate technic. She is interested in the notion of “reverse counterfeiting”: by coming from a trivial model, a common object of minor value, she imagines how to give a nobler copy.

Marie Sirgue experimented for the Cité’s call for creation: from a montage of several photographs from a construction site’s tarpaulin, which just came out of its wrapping, with its wrinkles and its play-on-light thanks to the use of a deported flash, she proposes a big project in trompe l’oeil style, in the draped textile tradition of the historical Aubusson tapestry. For this project, the hangs play with effects of shine, iridescence and light should give the illusion of the plastic being crumpled. Marie Sirgue produces a blur between the original tarpaulin’s framework and the weft of the tapestry, precisely by playing with the technical language of the tapestry, flacked fabric or flat tint. The blues are electric, willfully artificial.

The weaving was entrusted to the Atelier A2 in Aubusson.

Eva Nielsen gets the Cité’s Great Prize 2016 with Lucite, a tapestry proposition in trompe l’oeil style, which plays with a tension between the monumental and the intimate

After going through London’s Central Saint Martins and graduating the Beaux-Arts in Paris, Eva Nielsen is a promising artist from the new French pictorial scene. Represented by Jousse in Paris, Selma Feriani in Tunis and London and The Pill in Istanbul, the young French-Danish is interested in the theme of the interlacing. Her plastic art work is a work of layers: from photographs, Eva Nielsen takes the images over by intervening in successive layers, successive frames of silkscreen printing, application of paint or ink.

For the Cité’s 2016 call for creation, Eva Nielsen proposed a project in trompe l’oeil style. From the name of an illness preventing the confrontation with day light and obligating the ill persons to protect themselves from the sun under a hessian, the work Lucite comes from a research where the artiste superposes the impression of a mosquito net on top of a landscape picture. Planned to measure 2,20 meters large and 3 meters high, the work plays with the tapestry’s monumental dimensions and the intimate perception of the landscape through the textile framework.

While she works her images in successive layers, the realization of a tapestry allows her to transcend her artistic signature by touching directly the material which she prints since several years. As a result of five years of research, this tapestry project could allow her to “merges the tracing papers”, by setting the image into a unique gesture, the one of the weavers.

The weaving was realized by the Atelier Patrick Guillot in 2018.

Capucine Bonneterre, 6^th Prize, 2015 call for creation “Aubusson weaves fashion”

Capucine Bonneterre, young textile creator, proposed an elegant coat in a Japanese spirit, half-way between garment and object of choreographic composition.

Along her researches on the technic of the Aubusson tapestry, Capucine Bonneterre saw an analogy between the relays – weaving’s interruptions which allow the color changing – and the principle of the buttonhole. She then decided to integrate this technical imperative of the tapestry in the graphic composition of her coat.

Entirely thought as to be woven, this project emphasizes the play on lights between matte material and shiny fibers within red shades. The contrast between the apparent simplicity of the weaving on the right side and the wrong side of the tapestry, which is “looser” and furnished, is put forward by leaving visible parts of the garment on the wrong side.

This long coat, woven in one unique piece, is thought up to be assembled without finishing stitches, via a folding system, then set in place by the lacing and the braiding of the buttonhole network. The presentation of the work is to be imagined in a scenography, which is close to the performance: a choreographed passage from the hanging tapestry to the garment, which would be laced up to the body.

Capucine Bonneterre has graduated the École nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs in Paris (section “clothes design”). She notably collaborates with Cacharel, Christophe Lemaire.

Vincent Blouin and Julien Legras, 5^th Prizze, 2015 call for creation “Aubusson weaves fashion”

With Henri Cap, the two designers decided to revive an ancient motif to dress a very contemporary accessory: the cap.

Instead of simply copying a contemporary motif about the technique of low-warp tapestry, Vincent Blouin and Julien Legras came from the conception of the tapestry as a precious accessory, expression of the kings’ glory and the symbol of their power, and they imagined a work over the crown motif.

Playing with the oppositions and contrasts, they decided to confront this monarchy symbol in form of a cap, both very used in the fashion world and considered as the ultimate modern and democratic accessory. This reflection then gave birth to a hybrid object, representation of the ancient in a new and unexpected form.

3 kings, 3 eras, 3 styles

Henri Cap is actually a collection of three caps. Even if the idea of an opposition between the democratic accessory and the symbol of the monarchist power still lingers within the three pieces, each one of them proposes a particular style through a progression in regards to the complexity of the motif.

With less details and colors, the Henri IV cap plays with monochromatic colors and simplicity. The cap in the style of Louis XIV uses more colors. Finally, the Louis XV cap with the shine of its jewels and its large amount of colors can be perceived as a little more feminine. In these three pieces, the designers took into account one of the fundamental characteristic of the tapestry: the weft play allows different levels of reading in function of the distance in the perception. Observed from far off, the tapestry delivers its message. And when one gets closer, the aesthetics and the virtuosity of the motif are the ones which shine.

With proven experience in scenography, the two artists presented their collection in a peculiar mise en scène, to strengthen the sensation of anachronism provoked by such unexpected pieces.

Julien Legras and Vincent Blouin met at the ENSCI. They are both co-founders of the agency Élément commun.

Infinite flowers: le tableau-objet, by Maroussia Rebecq, 2015 3^rd Prize equal ranking

The fashion designer Maroussia Rebecq, alias Andrea Crews, proposes a series of fanny packs coming from a painting-piece, which would stay as an art work after the cutting of the pattern.

The weaving is realized by the Atelier de la Lune.

A series of sticks, by Alessandro Piangiamore, 2015 3^rd Prize equally ranked.

For the 2015 call for creation “Aubusson weaves fashion”, the Italian plastic artist Alessandra Piangiamore proposed a series of sticks, at the border between luxury accessories and “utilitarian object”. It takes the motif of the peacock back, which is very present in the tapestries from Aubusson, notably by Dom Robert, to give it both an abstract and a natural form.

The weaving was realized by the Atelier Catherine Bernet.

Libramen Forma, Prisca Vilsbol and Dagmar Kestner, 2^nd Prize 2015 “Aubusson weaves fashion”

For their project Libramen Forma, Prisca Vilsbol and Dagmar Kestner founded their thinking on the passage of the 2-D tapestry into the volume of a 3-D garment. Thus, it is a statuesque dress, which they are providing.

They also aimed to overcome the stiffness of the tapestry material to draw a flowing garment. The two designers chose to create an impression of volume thanks to a fold of fabric in trompe l’oeil style. Thus, even though the garment has a straight-cut, forms emanate from it.

The weaving was realized by the Atelier Françoise Vernaudon. The designers proceed to the assembly of the dress in their studio in Copenhagen.

Prisca Vilsbol is French and Danish, Dagmar Kestner is German and Romanian. They are both fashion designer.

Christine Phung won the Cité’s Grand Prize 2015 for her “glitched” Teddy jacket

The creator chooses an iconic sportswear piece: the teddy jacket. She adds a clutch with it.

Taking inspiration from digital aesthetics, Christine Phung develops collections for the Y generation. She imagined a “glitch” motive that is coming from screen errors resulting from electronic failures. Willfully blurry, the motif gives an impression of movement. Christine Phung then plays with the poetical sense which can be given to an immediate mistake.

The pattern has been imagined so as the weaving, done flat, takes then a 3-D form thanks to the side sewing and above the sleeves. The weaving was entrusted to the Atelier Catherine Bernet (Felletin) and the piece fall from the loom on June 13^th, 2018. Christine Phung then proceeds to the assembly with a sewing workshop.

Christine Phung, fashion designer in charge of her own brand since 2011, was named laureate notably of the ANDAM Fashion awards in 2013, category “First Collection”, which has opened to her the Parisian Fashion Week’s calendar. She took the lead of Leonard Paris’ artistic Direction in the beginning of 2016.

If, from Pascal Haudressy – tapestry installation on the theme “Tapestry-Matrix”, 2014 call for creation
Dimension of the tapestry: 3,20 m x 4,70 m. Resin sculpture, video screening

Linked with the State (Direction Générale de la Création Artistique / Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles / Massif Central), the call for creation took this year the form of a public artistic order for the making of a “tapestry-matrix”. This work aims to be mobile and itinerant, both a work of art and a mediation device. The jury designated Pascal Haudressy for his mixed media proposition: If.

A multidimensional project associating tapestry, resin sculpture, video screening and mediation device

Tapestry, sculpture, digital screening and cultural mediation device about the creative process of woven art, this piece sets at the same time history, tradition and tapestry know-how, while revisiting the medium’s scope of possibilities.

This piece, cultural matrix, legacy foundation, is both in relation with the past, History and our era. It leans on a temporal know-how and proposes a contemporary reinterpretation dialoguing with the issues and the representation systems of our time.

Formally, the tapestry is composed of three physical outlines, which act as molds in a structural and supportive way. One sculptural part, a foreground, then a second outline in the depth of field and finally the frame work. These three outlines complete each other and each frame surrounds the other and allows it to build itself.

The project extends the tapestry history through the iconic genre of the “greenery”. A vibrant, moving greenery where a fixed physical space, such as a legacy base, merges with potentiality, immateriality and a renewed movement without interruption, reconfigured, matrixed, in a contemporary synthesis.

Pascal Haudressy took inspiration from Caspar David Friedrich’s painting The tree with crows, in which the time seems suspended. He introduces a contemplative, meditative dimension, in our contemporary era marked by the virtual. He puts forward the pattern of the crow, link between the physical and spiritual world, between the woven media and the projected light.

The branches, in the foreground, give an impression of tree bark. In the middle ground, thinner, they seem to disappear, as if they were gradually absorbed by light. The sky occupies the background, like a framework, in which the tapestry and the ballet of the clouds blend. Thus, there is an impression of the tapestry absorbing the image at the same time that the image smooths the weaving’s weft.

Pascal Haudressy particularly comes across the question over the relationship between video and new mediums. The tapestry opens here new perspectives: the project summons both the traditional know-how and the research for new materials; it is both in relation with our era and takes root in the renewal of a temporal know-how. It intertwines a concrete textile material and material of light/movement, tradition and innovation. It is about creating new emulsions and interlacing, so much on the technical aspect as on the perceptual one. The video medium plays with the weft and the knot of the tapestry. The former, far from being a mere screen, functions by emulating the screened image, becomes “matrix” of the video and informatics mold, constituted of real captures footages and generated images.

The process in searching in light proprieties, optics in materials and their textures for the technical realization of the weaving – and through the latter the displayed know-how – is documented. The specificities of the different stages of the creation and production will be put forward in an objective of mediation.

The tapestry weaving was realized by Patrick and Marie Guillot’s workshop and Cc Brindelaine in 2015.

Pascal Haudressy, born in 1968, lives and works in Paris. Engraver and digital artist, his works count among the collection of international personalities and businessman. He is represented by the Louise Alexander Gallery. After ten years spent at UNESCO as head of the cultural projects and many realizations implying artists of international renown, Pascal Haudressy decides to devote himself fully to his personal artistic work. His first works date back to 2005. His work creates a link between past and future, between science and myth. From the very beginning, his sculptures, installations and videos characterize by their exceptional technicity and the use of high-tech materials and technologies. The esthetically pleasing aspect of a work fully well-worn by the artist never loses a strong symbolic dimension and an existential questioning on the becoming of Mankind. The mutations of the reality and the plurality of experiences which stems from it, constitute the nodal point of the consideration and Pascal Haudressy’s artistic experience. Discover the work of Pascal Haudressy on his website.

This project benefited from financial support from the Minister for Culture and Communication, the Programme Opérationnel Massif Central and the Languedoc-Roussillion Region.

Jane Harris, 4th Prize – 2013 Call for contemporary creation
Dimensions: 84 cm x 105 cm

For the 2013 edition of the call for contemporary creation of the Cité internationale, Jane Harris proposed a five-colored project retaking the forms, with which she is used to work.

After art studies at the Goldsmith College of London University, Jane Harris centered her work on a research on the subject of the gardens. She benefited, to see her works through to the end, from a grant in Japan, then in France, where she studied successively the traditional Japanese gardens and the classical French gardens.

Her artistic practice, sometimes qualified as “rococo-minimalist”, structures around curvy, rounded, oval forms, in a play on reflection and mirror. For the call for projects “Les nouvelles verdures d’Aubusson” (the new greeneries of Aubusson), her approach of the tapestry is based on uniformed colors and works on symmetry. She aims to work on the volume to emboss the design of the woven work. The weaving was entrusted to Patrick Guillot’s workshop in Aubusson (2015).

Painter-artist from English origins, Jane Harris lives and works in Dordogne. After graduating the Beaux-Arts at the Goldsmith College of the University of London, she then teaches there for 15 years. Her works integrated amongst others the collections of the FRAC (Aquitaine and Limousin) and the Art Collection of the British government. In 2011, she was an artist-in-residence at the Josef Albers Foundation (Connecticut, USA).