Diane de Bournazel, 3rd Prize – 2013 Call for contemporary creation
Dimension 180 cm x 31,5 cm

An intimate work, in which tapestry and illumination.

Diane de Bournazel mostly works on a small scale. Her works stand out by a very intimate, muted approach. At once painter, illustrator, plastic artist and engraver, she carries out illustrating activities in youth publishing but devotes herself essentially to the realization of unique painted and cut books. Her artistic books are small precious objects, filled with lyricism and poetry. In that, the transposal of her work into the tapestry medium is interesting in several ways. It is both a game of scales for the dimensions and a game of mirrors for the narrative aspect of the work. Indeed, Diane de Bournazel’s drawings end the illuminations are combined with the primitive art and culture, merging diverse cultures, notably eastern and pre-Colombian. The tapestry Bordure des bois has been woven by the Atelier A2 in 2014.

Diane de Bournazel lives and works in Corrèze. Added to her illustrating and illuminating activities, she takes part in volumes of contemporary poetry. Her work features many public and private collections in France and abroad and she exposed in Paris, Marseille, London and Marrakech.

Leo Chiachio and Daniel Giannone, 2nd Prize – 2013 call for contemporary creation
Dimension of the project: 3 m x 5 m

Like the Great Prize, the second prize 2013 was won by a duo of artists, Argentinians this time. Their project is a jubilatory painting, inspired by the Latin-American imaginary – notably guarani – of the forest and stamped with a magical realism in the style of the Argentinean Julio Cortazar’s or the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s literary works.

In Leo Chiachio’s and Daniel Giannone’s painting, nature appears luxuriant, made of an infinite wealth of colors, colors and materials. Sometimes, it even turns into sparkling jewelry. Nature is presented on a scale which is higher than the human figures to underline how it is essential to protect it. The Aubusson tapestry was traditionally conceived as a form of remembrance, story of great epics. In that, Chiachio’s and Giannone’s work is a token of the contemporary emergency of the protection of this nature.

As in each of their work, the two artists represent themselves in the center. Presented with masks and feathers from guarani inspiration, they are also accompanied by their dog Piolin to present a new familial pattern. It is about setting into the tapestry the changes which occurred in occidental societies regarding the new set-ups whose encounters today the familial institution.

La famille dans la joyeuse verdure follows perfectly the tradition and the history of the Aubusson greeneries. Indeed, it proposes to the spectator to sink into an immersive narrative universe tainted with fantastic elements. The central scene is placed within a greenery background, in which abound details both realistic and oneiric. The weaving of this great greenery scene was entrusted to the Atelier A2 in Aubusson. The monumental work was revealed to the public on Mai, 18th 2017. A small format version was woven by Patrick Guillot’s workshop in 2014.

Leo Chiachio and Daniel Giannone live and work in Buenos Aires. After a training at the Beaux-Arts, they decided to break their habits in their pictorial know-how and dedicate themselves to other techniques, notably the embroidery and the porcelain. In Argentina, they are represented by the gallery Ruth Benzacar and by the School Gallery in Paris.

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Quentin Vaulot and Goliath Dyèvre, First Prize – 2013 call for contemporary creation

For the 2013 edition of the Cité’s call for contemporary creation, it is a designer duo which won the Great Prize. Their project binds tapestry and ceramics, in a hanging of five pieces. Dimensions of each tapestry: 180 cm high x 72 cm large.

Quentin Vaulot and Goliath Dyèvre adopted a science-fictional position to underline the fact that the greeneries of Aubusson are a mutant heritage. Their work is an assembly of five tapestries, introduced as the completion of biological-police related inquiry. Following the history conveyed par these tapestries, a mad scientist, in his secret lab, succeeded in transforming textile greeneries to produce new essences. This hanging is the scientific explanation of the experiences carried by a mysterious lab. The five tapestries correspond to five protocols in re-strengthening the greeneries, aiming to generate greeneries to make them more resistant to contemporary climate issues.

Thus, the five tapestries which compose this hanging develop each one of them, a protocol of new greeneries’ genetical manipulation showcased by the porcelain elements. These protocols consist in the isolation, the injection, the breeding, the luminous and sound exposal. These diverse protocols allow re-vivifying the colors of the greeneries element to give them a new shine. Study the greeneries through the biological prism allows then to question the contemporary relation to nature.

Entrusted to the Atelier de la Lune (Aubusson) in the 2014 autumn, the weaving of the hanging’s five pieces demanded two years of work. The weaver Nadia Petkovic led many scientific researches, both to reproduce areas from ancient tapestries and to vivify to the most the finishing sewing work once the porcelain elements are finished and the hanging systems are set on the tapestries.

Goliath Dyèvre (born in 1980) and Quentin Vaulot (born in 1983) live and work in Paris since 2009. Artists and designers, they were edited by Cinna, Petite Friture, Non sans Raison. They collaborated notably with the CRAFT in Limoges, Hermès, EDF and the National Monuments Center. They were exposed at the Vitra Design Museum and the Power Station of Art in Shanghai and were residents of the Villa Kujoyama in 2014. Nowadays, they continue their activities in separate ways.

Christophe Marchalot and Felicia Fortuna, Jury’s special merit – 2012 call for contemporary creation

Finalists of the 2012 call for creation on the theme “Design furniture in Aubusson, Christophe Marchalot and Felicia Fortuna were distinguished by a Jury’s special merit for their project Le Bain. A creepy and seducing object, which seems to be directly coming out a contemporary cabinet of curiosities.

Quirky and unexpected project, Le Bain explores the tapestry medium, both by getting inspired and getting free from traditional category, to get into the grey area between design and plastic arts. Le Bain is material and shape, half-natural creature, half-object, as if it were coming from a surrealist vegetal world. It is a disturbing creation, unclassifiable, which transforms the pluricentennial narrative universe of the Aubusson tapestry into a sensitive experience, built around the fantastic bestiary.

In that, Christophe Marchalot’s and Felicia Fortuna’s project, located at the border of the vegetal and animal world, is in coherence with the essential qualities of the Aubusson tapestry, decorative medium, narrative and immersive. It sets and reminds of the raw materials necessary to the tapestry manufacturing: wool to weave, plants to dye. The tones are inspired by the shell of a Thai beetle, here re-worked by Mankind, echoing the strange and fantastic creatures from the Middle-Ages’ bestiaries, which inhabit the traditional greeneries of Aubusson.

The immersivity of Le Bain is double-sided. It sinks the spectator in a harrowing and sensual atmosphere, while it proposes to the body to submerge in water. The choice of the object-bathtub echoes the recurrence of the water theme in the works of the two artists and causes a breach until now unexploited in the tapestry field but involved from the 18th Century onwards by needle lace works for the making of bathtub’s surrounds. Decorative art by excellence, the tapestry essentially spread in the salons. It gets out here from its traditional range to enter a housing field, which it had not formerly explored. As an object evocating the sensuality, this tub creates an opening on the intimacy, far from the chivalrous epics, which were used as inspiration for many hangings in Aubusson.

The work showcases the ambivalent relationship mankind had, and always has with water. Le Bain puts forward the preciousness of the water, source of life at heart of the environmental and strategic issues of the 21st Century. But it also reveals the danger of this liquid, yet so necessary to Humanity and hygiene. The object reminds that, in the Middle-Ages, the triggering of the plague caused public baths’ closing. Evoking undeniably the HIV, the tub’s spikes refresh these dreads.

This artistic view proposed by Christophe Marchalot and Felicia Fortuna to illustrate their woven bathtub project seduced a collector visiting the Museum and ordered the weaving by Catherine Bernet’s workshop in Felletin. The work has fallen down the loom in December 2014.

Formed as an architect, Christophe Marchalot first devoted himself to the conception and the creation of furniture then to architectural projects, notably within the agencies Massimiliano Fuksas and Marc Barani. He then specialized in the layout and the panorama at the Conservatoire International des Parcs et Jardins in Chaumont-sur-Loire. Felicia Fortuna first studied drama at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, before becoming a plastic artist and author. They work together since 2008.

Vincent Bécheau and Marie-Laure Bourgeois, Third Prize – 2012 call for contemporary creation

Vincent Bécheau’s and Marie-Laure Bourgeois’ monumental project Toute personne 2 mixes three dimensions of the Aubusson tapestry: the hanging tapestry, upholstery and the rug.

The project is composed of a tapestry cut in a U shape to raise up one part on the pattern of a door. It is a project with considerable dimensions: the total length is of 8 meters for 2 meters large and the door reached 2,80 meters. On the verticalized part, the back of the tapestry is also thought as in graphic terms, which is an integral part of the work. The weft threads are left long enough to be knotted in regular pompons. About 70 colors are necessary to realize this tapestry with complex calligraphic patterns.

Both artists get their inspiration in Robert Bonfils’ War Exhibition, illustrating the Allies’ victory after WWI, exposed during the “Expo 1925” at the tapestry museum in Aubusson, in 2012. From there on, they led a reflection on war, peace, the notion of border and the representation of the dialogue. Toute personne 2 showcases the double nature of the border, separating line declared by the States and trade areas flooded by individuals.

Leaning on the common etymology in French of “texte” and “tissue”, in coherence with war and border symbolism, both artists having chosen the multitude of writings as a pattern. It is the materiality of the writing which guided the work’s conception: the letters are only signifiers of the language universality; the characters are not the carrier of a message, which would have been written. Thus, the alphabets worldwide crosses, stands alongside and merges until the erasing of the writing, visible in close up but which moves on to a dense graphism from a distance, until the formation of a landscape.

The weaving was realized by the Atelier Catherine Bernet in Felletin. Begun in January 2014, the tapestry has fallen down the loom in March 2016.

Vincent Bécheau and Marie-Laure Bourgeois are artists, formed as DPLG architects. In 2013, they are laureates of the contest for the realization of a Resistance memorial in Saint-Etienne de Puycorbier and published the essay Glossaire du designer (A designer’s Glassary) (Publisher La Muette/Le Bord de l’eau). In 2009, they are laureates of the contest for the commemoration for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature à Bordeaux. Their project “Toute personne” consists in the writing on the ground of the foreword and the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights between the Ecole and the Law Court. Between 2009 and 2010, they create and organize MONC in Bergerac, reflection led by about thirty artists on the relations between private and public spaces in the city.

Alexandre Moronnoz & Julie Costaz, 2nd Prize – 2012 Call for contemporary creation
Dimensions of the project: 505,5 cm large x 200 cm high x 27,5 deep

Alexandre Moronnoz and Julie Costaz presented, for the 2012 edition of the Cité’s call for creation, on the theme “Design furniture in Aubusson”, a massive bookcase project called Stock Exchange, of which the motive represents New York’s stock exchange screens.

The project aims to be coherent with Alexandre Moronnoz’ researches: his work articulates around a reflection on the practical issues of the objects and on the appropriation of public spaces and shared by the users. Thus, the tapestry which covers the bookcase is thought as being a continued space, without any interruption of motives. In the metallic and wooden structure are inserted compartments to create storage spaces.

The project lays on 30 shades of colors, six of them being pure. The typographies are white. An important reflection work over the weaving technique was led by Julie Costaz, a designer specialized in the textile field: the weaving should be done following the length sense and certain parts will be willfully non-woven to obtain openwork corresponding to the placing of the bookcase’s compartments.

Born in 1977, Alexandre Moronnoz was a student at the Ecole Normale. He then studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle (ENSCI – Les Ateliers) in Paris. In 2009, he received the Great Prize of the Ville de Paris, design section, for his “CCC” project.

Julie Costaz was born in 1981. After graduating the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art in Nancy in 2006, she then specialized in textile design at the ENSCI – Les Ateliers in Paris.

Bina Baitel, First Prize – 2012 Call for contemporary creation

Wool tapestry, oak veneer furniture, about 7 m².

Bina Baitel’s project Confluentia won the 2012 edition of the Cité’s call for contemporary creation of 2012, organized in partnership with the Cité du Design in Saint-Etienne.

Merging upholstered furniture and an Aubusson low pile carpet, Confluentia is a hybrid project, “a micro-landscape between design furniture and tapestry” according Bina Baitel’s words. The object appears as an interior landscape, in the manner of the 17th – 18th Century Aubusson tapestry, like an artificial lake between two wooden embossed designs. It is a household landscape, which reminds both of nature and house-familiar typologies that are occasional furniture and the carpet.

The drawing is abstract, it represents a peaceful lake, generator of serenity, being animated by the gush of two sources as well. It is a contemplative-friendly space. The drawing motive evokes a topographic map: the carpet is the drawing of a place, a life space. It refers to the oriental use of the carpet as an ideal place to share a moment of conviviality. Bina Baitel has the user come in the landscape, who becomes actor of the tapestry. The action is not within the frame of the relationship with the tapestry any longer, but rather within the tapestry itself. Confluentia is the confluence point between the in-visu perception and the in-situ experience.

Many exchanges occurred between the designer and the craftsman to prepare the weaving, the sampling, the choice of color and the tapestry insertion into the bedside tables that came with it. The weaving realization was entrusted to Françoise Vernaudon’s workshop. The bedside tables were realized by La Fabrique (Lyon) and the upholstery by the Ateliers Charles Jouffre (Lyon).

Bina Baitel is born in 1977 in Paris. After graduating the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture of Paris-La Villette, she founds her own studio in 2006. In 2008, Bina Baitel was awarded laureate with help of the VIA creation for her PullOver lamp. With a style characterizing itself by playing on materials and volumes, her creations, in the manner of her “Under My Skin” collection, for which she collaborates with the Next Level gallery, answers a will to create functional objects. After collaborating with the large retailers, luxury brands, publishing house and art galleries, Bina Baitel wins the same year, in 2012, the Cité’s First Prize and the creation Prize of the city of Paris.

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Mathieu Mercier, 3rd Prize – 2011 Call for creation

Low warp tapestry, wool, metallized polyester, 3,20 m x 3,20 m.

Leading to a reflection over the definition of the object’s place within the industry and the field of art, Mathieu Mercier’s work, Marcel Duchamp Prize 2003, characterize by a permanent questioning over the symbolic and utilitarian functions of the objects. His productions demonstrate an unabashed behavior towards casual objects in a radical approach liberating the object, unique or serial, of every acquired knowledge.

Mathieu Mercier’s work, primed during the second edition of the Cité’s call for contemporary creation, builds itself around a game of a “two-way trip” between the material and the motive. From far away, the viewer only recognizes a textile motive, from which he does not succeed in determining in which way it is done. As much as one gets closer to the tapestry, the motive gets blurry, there is only a number of pixels to be seen but one succeeds in perceiving the textile material of the work. The tapestry then composes and decomposes itself, following in the realized movement to give “the illusion of a realistic representation remotely to become geometrical from a closer angle”, according to the artist’s words.

For the realization of its work in tapestry, Mathieu Mercier indicated his wish to obtain the flattest tapestry possible, in window dressing, breaking the imitation effect of the represented object, which could have been expected in such a project. Furthermore, the chromatic scale is tightened to seven colors. With this work, Mathieu Mercier is interested in the settlement of mini-tapestries realized from a fragment of the rope. This work of Mathieu Mercier’s is within the scope of a series of works realized by other people (craftsman etc.).

The weaving of this massive rope of 3,20 m x 3,20 m, realized by the weavers Daniel Bayle and Agnès-Marie Durieux for the workshop Pascal Legoueix, has been set free from the loom on the 6th, June 2014.

Mathieu Mercier has graduated from the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Bourges and the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques in Paris. In 2003, he won the Marcel Duchamp Prize. In 2007, his whole work is exposed at the Modern Art Museum of the Ville de Paris. He is represented by the galleries Mehdi Chouakri (Berlin), Massimo Minini (Brescia, Italy), Lange & Pult (Switzerland) and Ignacio Liprandi (Buenos Aires, Argentina).

Marc Bauer, 2nd Prize – 2011 Call for contemporary creation

Both in their themes as in their aesthetics, Marc Bauer’s drawing are very inspired by the iconography of the Italian and German Renaissance, but also by the Baroque. For Melancholia I, the artist redraws the famous Mélancolie realized by the painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer in 1514, nicknamed in Germany “Bild der Bilder”, “the image of all images”. Dimensions: 3,60 m high x 3 m large.

Melancholia is within the scope of a research led by Marc Bauer since several years, articulated around the idea of deconstructing the drawing as a unique piece. Playing on the scales and the materials, the artist is in research of transposing his drawings in different materials (digital printing, photopolymer, tapestry etc.), the original drawing then finding itself modified to submit to the imperatives of the used technique. In that sense, the transposition into tapestry of Dürer’s Mélancolie redrawn by Marc Bauer aims to enrich the starting drawing and give back a certain sculpture-like aspect as well. For the artist, the tapestry should not only be considered as a media for the image, it should also exist in its own reality.

The tapestry consists in a very interesting medium for the transposition of Marc Bauer’s drawings, which are echoing one of his essential qualities: the narrative. As a starting point, the artist often takes personal memories, archive photographs or family photo albums, as many individual stories which he tries and replace in a larger historical context: “I see my drawings as a sort of archeology, which attempts, sometimes with humor, sometimes with despair, to bring back emotions and events”, he explains.

The tapestry is woven in black and white, with only a few hints of vivid colors. To realize it, a very important work of reflection with the weaver is needed to summarize the effect of destructuring, of dilating wanted by the artist. Thus, the weaver must play with the material in a very innovative way and keeping the classical weaving techniques in the same time, for the flesh, for instance. The translation of the “worn out” idea, altering in a new tapestry in order to bring him, following in Marc Bauer’s words, “a second emotional layer” is a technical challenge for the weaver.

Woven by Patrick Guillot’s workshop in Aubusson, the tapestry has fallen down the loom on the 22nd, November 2013.

Marc Bauer was born in Switzerland in 1975. He lives and works in Berlin. Exhibition auditor for the 30 years of the FRAC Auvergne (Exhibition la Révolte et l’Ennui, 2013), he has also been held back for the “off” of Art Basel 2013 (auditor: Florence Derieux), where he has presented, in the “Parcours” (Journey), the film “The Architect” in collaboration with the rock band Kafka (co-produced by the FRAC Auvergne). He has been exposed in 2013 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris within the scope of the exhibition presenting the works of Guerlain’s donation and participated in the collective exhibition 101 Sacré at the Migros Museum in Zürich.

Cécile Le Talec, First Prize – 2011 Call for contemporary creation

Cécile Le Talec builds her work, very influenced by the anthropology, by giving body to the sounds.

Looking for having happen in a material way, what is, by nature, immaterial, the sound can become in its various installations a mere object or silence. Sound is there, but it can or cannot be. In the same way, the bird producer of sound(s) and inspiration(s) can be present or absent. The breath, plastic art tool of preference for the artist, structures his consideration to give the sound its materiality. The breath is music and the music is architecture. The architecture becomes landscape and Mankind evolves in this landscape.

Woven and sonorous architectural project, Panoramique polyphonique invites the visitor to penetrate the woven space and its blue light to listen to a soundtrack mixing bird’s singing and the whistled language of Gomera’s Island (the silbo), itself being part of UNESCO’s immaterial cultural Heritage of Humanity. The soundtrack gives to the invisible birds a presence, as a reminder that they inhabit in silence the Aubusson tapestries since the 15th Century. The warp threads, hidden, evoke the vocal cords, never visible, but always present in one’s ear. By penetrating the pan shot, Mankind engages in a circular horizon.

In this circular music room built to human scale (2,20 m high and 2,20 m of diameter), the tapestry is both the space and the symbol. All the tapestry’s threads are tucked in to create a “double-face” impression. This architectural device sets a panoramic brain. It translates the music into the image on the scale change, through the replication of an immense detail – the spectrogram of bird’s singing – in a plastic art approach, which gives form to material support. The detail becomes the everything in a melody as universal as the birds’ word.

The weaving of Panoramique polyphonique was realized by the Atelier A2 in Aubusson. It has been inaugurated on the 29th, June 2013 at the Centre Jean Lurçat in Aubusson. The piece was notably exposed at the Zheijang Art Museum upon Hangzhou’s first international Three-year of textile art in China, in 2013.

Represented by the Parisian gallery School Gallery, Cécile Le Talec has been exposed in several regional Founds of contemporary art, but also abroad, in galleries and contemporary art museums (Mexico, Russia, and China).