Audrey Devaud works in sculpture and installation, often in ceramics, but she also explores wood, plaster, glass and other materials. Know-how and the reappropriation of the craft gesture are central to her practice. Her works revolve around the notion of fetish or personal objects, which she also likes to describe as pocket objects.
During the residency, the artist worked with the students on the folklore surrounding winter celebrations such as Saturnalia in Roman antiquity and the more recent tradition of the galette des rois. These two festivities are thought to be linked and to have their origins in the observation of the stars.
Parhélie*, presented at the Frac, explores the relics of this folklore. By reinterpreting the bean and the crown, she shows the fetishisation of simple objects and evokes the human tendency to individualise the multiple in order to understand it better, or to turn a plural element into a singularity. The artist also refers to constellations, compositions of the mind that demonstrate our ability to appropriate the unknown as a reference point. We determine our division of time according to the revolution of the earth, and we have even catalogued the astronomical events specific to each day in ephemerides.
The exhibition takes the form of an installation made up of three aligned discs. The first represents a sun adorned with an openwork crown. The second, like a moon, is suspended and is made up of a multitude of beans that undulate with the movements of visitors. The third disc contains bronze beans, which, like rings with secret compartments, contain a constellation, visible or not.
*A parhelion is an atmospheric optical phenomenon in which the sun appears to be multiplied. Through a play of light reflections, several replicas of the sun can sometimes be seen aligned horizontally in the sky.
This project was carried out in partnership with the Lycée Edgar Faure in Morteau, as part of the "Excellence Métiers d'Art" label, the Rectorat and with the support of the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles de Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.
