Throughout the summer, Montivilliers Abbey in Normandy (France) will be hosting the “A la table des Dames” exhibition, retracing the last fifteen years of artist Cécile Raynal’s singular career. On this occasion, Artistics invites you to discover her approach and a selection of the works on show, including two installations created specially for the event.
Cécile Raynal’s work is divided between her studio in Normandy and residencies, which generally occur in places alien to artistic practice, on the fringes of society: prisons, hospitals, convents, etc. In these settings, the artist models the portraits of the people she meets in clay, and these portraits are informed by the interactions that arise on these occasions. The artist proceeds by association: the portraits are enriched by the memories, echoes and images that emerge from the stories she hears. Back in the studio, she continues these associations, drawing on a vast repertoire of tales, myths and other widely shared literary references. The end result is sculptures of animals or even hybrid – half-human, half-animal – creatures.
Her work includes bird-women, figures concealed under animal skins, mythological figures and portraits of loved ones. Women play a particularly important role in her work. She has a marked fascination for rebellious characters who dared to say no or defy a destiny chosen by others: the nymph Daphne, who rejected Apollo, or the 18th-century French woman of letters Olympe de Gouges, who fought for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery. There are also anonymous portraits that convey a certain fragility, like this faceless woman who confronts the viewer with an unfathomable void, a deeply hollowed-out interior.
Her sculptures sometimes meet and interact in installations. A case in point is La table des Dames, one of her most recent creations, which lends its name to the exhibition at Montivilliers Abbey. This installation brings together portraits of people known to the artist, friends or women she invited to pose to deepen their acquaintance. These portraits are gathered around a table, a sort of feminine banquet. Accompanying this scene are various sculptures of animals and objects, all evoking the artist’s associations with her own memories or other references. A single male figure appears as a spectator.
Commenting on this installation, the artist says: “It’s a storytelling table, stories whose I only know the beginnings” Although the artist’s work is abundant and symbolic, it is not strictly speaking narrative: rather, her sculptures and installations offer the beginnings of stories that the viewer may or may not choose to grasp, following their own thoughts, imagination and associations.
Born of encounters, her sculptures above all bear witness to the fact that, in going towards another, we run the risk of being shaken up and displaced, of seeing our inner edifice become unstable, albeit a fertile instability.
The rough figures bear the marks of having passed through matter and endured an ordeal, yet they stand – upright and alive. They conjure a world in which the animal, the feminine, the instinctive or rebellious side is embraced as an essential force. In this open, non-dogmatic yet deeply profound work, Cécile Raynal invites us to reconsider what connects us to others, memory and all forms of life.
