exhibition Villeneuve-lez-Avignon

Les communs/

Les communs

2020 2021

‘Les Communs’ is a collaborative exhibition which takes place in the accommodation cells of the Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lez-Avignon. Created in partnership with the artist residence association ECHANGEUR22, it is part of Architecture en Fête.

The exhibition began with a two-week residency at E22, which involved site visits and explorations of the archives in order to develop ideas based on the spaces and the stories of the Chartreuse.

ECHANGEUR22 with the works of Agathe Rosa, Flavie L.T, Guillaume Barborini, Alexandre Kato, and A.I.L.O.

Guillaume Barborini proposed a video based on a body of documents, where a voiceover links the Chartreuse (in particular the collapsed apse of the church) to various man-made constructions around the world. In this meandering journey from building to building, he examines the notion of heritage and the ways in which we inhabit it.
Click here to see the five videos.

Alexandre Kato found inspiration in some eighteenth-century accounts regarding the upkeep of the garden. He created two works, an installation and a scuplture, through which he examined the relationship between nature and the garden, artificiality and exoticism, and the echos that still resonate in our society today.

Flavie L.T was inspired by the direct relationship between the architecture and the rules which united the community of monks who lived at the Chartreuse. Her sculptural installations offer a double reading of the space, highlighting the symmetry of the building and the vertical/hotizontal dynamic.

Agathe Rosa immersed herself in the Carthusian experience with a sensitive approach to the architecture. Using a variety of creative methods (photography, sculpture, video and poetry) she constructed a vocabulary which allows us to communicate with the genius loci, or the spirit of the place.

A.I.L.O. (Anna-Eva Berge and Fabrice Leroux) produced an immersive installation which, through optical games and soundscapes, creates a dialogue with the architecture and allows us to examine our links with it.

The term commun (common) calls to mind the notions of sharing and of individuals becoming a social entity. Used in architectural vocabulary (‘the common areas’), it sits between the public and the private and questions our collective experience of space. The exploration at the Chartreuse, where the idea of a ‘community of individuals’ was characteristic of the social organisation of the monks, led to the concept becoming a theme for the exhibition. The artworks are not so much a response to the title as an experiment of common action and its interaction with the space.

Partners: MOB-AE, Mr Bricolage, Saint-Laurent-des-Arbres, Carrières Lugan.

With the support of Drac Occitanie, Région Occitanie, Département du Gard, Commune de Saint-Laurent-des-Arbres.