Exhibition

Écouter les murs invites viewers on a journey through certain spaces featured in two films by Jean Cocteau: Le Sang d'un poète (1930) and La Belle et la Bête (1946). The latter brings to the screen a fairy tale whose various versions have been written since the seventeenth century. The spaces of the castles?their walls, windows, and mirrors?that inspired this exhibition are those described in the first fairy tale published by Madame d'Aulnoy in 1697. The images from this tale, first inscribed on paper and later recorded on film, become entryways that open onto the spaces of the Françoise Livinec gallery.

Stills from these two films resonate with recurring themes in Camille Courier's work, particularly her exploration of spaces of confinement and her visualization of the relationship between the control of female bodies and architecture. How are these bodies able to subvert the walls that enclose them? The drawings presented here depict some of the escapes enacted by these bodies. Inspired by views drawn from Cocteau?s films, strategies of metamorphosis generate illustrated spaces that materialize the porous boundaries between human, vegetal, and animal architectures.

To embody these escapes, the artist draws on scenographic painting techniques, moving from miniature formats to immense painted canvases, such as those used for theater and opera sets. Camille Courier deploys her mastery of boundless drawing, intertwining trompe-l'œil and real architecture, encouraging immersion within the fictional space of the fairy tale. The exhibition invites visitors into an unprecedented play of scale. The drawn experience connects the sketch in a pocket notebook to the monumental canvas. The artist erects the solid walls of the Beast?s castle, then transforms them into supple membranes like the film stock of Jean Cocteau?s cinema, or into liquid surfaces like the mirror in Le Sang d?un poète.?